OLD FRIENDS MET AT A MAY DAY RECEPTION

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27987, 6 June 1956, Page 12

OLD FRIENDS MET AT A MAY DAY RECEPTION

RETURN TO CHINA-411

[Specially written for “The Press'' by

JAMES BERTRAM]

The invitation to the May Day reception at the Peking Hotel came on a ; folded oblong card, with the national emblem of People s China neatly embossed in red on the outside—the sheaves of grain and workers wheel enclosing a palace gate < the Tien An Mem. over which rode the five 6yenointed stars. We were all invited to drink cocktails with Premier Chou En-lai at 530 at the Peking Hotel. This meant an early return from the Summer Palace, and. for the women, some flutter of trepidation about suer, items as hats and gloves. Since there were to be 1000 guests, however. >t looked as though minor irregularities of dress and protocol might get by. We assembled at 5 m the lobby of 1 the Hsin Chiao: and certainly our 1 fellow guests there had never before appeared quite so smartly turned out. National costumes, of course, had it all ' over Western suits fetched up from the bottom of a suitcase. But the

■.ne oonuci vi & New Zealander* achieved an effect of high respectability, with more or less uniform grey suits for the men. Ngaere Te Punga was trim in a twopiece suit and Sydney blouse; Eve Page, in feathery black, wore her grandest duchess manner, until it was discovered that she had forgotten to tie her shoe-laces: and Angus Ross had ■to kneel chivalrously in the hotel i lobbv to perform that office. We got away with a certain amour* of flap: a car had stalled in the fairway outside the hotel. But willing hands pushed it off: and we drove slowly through the old Peking Lega- • tion quarter in a line of cars two and sometimes three abreast. The Peking Hotel that I had known in the dolce far niente days before the war is now more than doubled in size. It was always an ugly building: and the additions do not help -its exterior. **Too much hurry.” Chen Han-seng had told me. ‘The architect couldn't think of anything better than to use ; the same style as the old part, only bigger.” But inside, the large new. building is better. It has a magnificent Cbinese-style reception lialL • quite capable of dealing with the 1000 ‘ guests from more than 50 countries. ■ who were gathered for this reception. Choa En-lai Chou En-lai was waiting to jgreet us as we arrived, along with other high Government officials. As the queue drew nearer. I studied again that handsome, mobile-, face with the superbly expressive eyebrows that I had first seen in the Shansi hills 18 years before, looking at me quizzicallv across a shaggy North China pony 1 • outside Peng Teh-huais headquar- ‘ ’ ters. It had not changed much. Chou. ■ unlike Mao. has not grown stout in office: the Chung Li •■‘Chief Manager"» - of China clearly still gets enough exercise.

exercise. I knew how little time one ever has to talk in a reception line, sn tried to make it snappy. “Premier Chou does not recognise me.” I said in Chinese as I took his hand. “But we have met before, in the north with the Eighth Route Army, and later in Chungking.'* It was no feigned recognition that showed in those brilliant eyes: though, like most old acquaintances I met in China. Chou flicked an apologetic glance at my grey hairs. •‘But yes. ni course I recognise the British journalist Welcome back to China.” I thought I had done pretty well with that, and moved on feeling that at least I had established contact, and might now forget about Chou En-lai ■ for the rest of the evening. Inside the great hall, we took up a position obviously assigned to Australiarts and New Zealanders. Rewi Alley was there, squeezed into dark blue suit ’he never seemed to be comfortable in a tie). Dan Speight, of the i “Sydney Morning Herald.** David Chip, a Reuter man, newly arrived ’for Reuters had refused to’ accept a temporary Peking assignment, and . had only lately been granted permanent representation). Michael Shapiro, and several others from British countries. Mr Chu Tu-nan, president of the cultural association that was host to our New Zealand partv, . beamed at us rather like an oldfashioned schoolmaster, and saw that we had food and drink. And. after the usual exchanges had filled the first half-hour, from the upper end of the . hall • but not from the platform) Chou En-lai made his speech of welcome. ■ It was a polite little speech, saying all the expected things about inter- | national friendship at May Dav. But . there were some very Chinese touches. “Mountains and oceans cannot separate us. nor can different political views and religious beliefs keep us apart.” In English, this has an echo of the “Canadian Boat Song”: IH 1 Chinese, it carries overtones of I Confucius, and reminded me of the way the exiles from Manchuria always spoke of their homeland when it was under Japanese occupation. The Thaw”—N« Cliche ( An almost inevitable comparison between the spring season of Mav and the international “thaw" with its Promise of peace and growing friend-

ship between nations was no mere ’ cliche in Peking, where all around us in the p!ac« we had juM been visitmg—Pei Hai, Temple of Heaven, bummer Palace—the voung leaves were showing their tenderest green. • and the late blossom still lingered. Even m the heart of this old citv, the white lilac was fragrant everywhere. 1 remembered some celebrated editions of the Communist newspaper in Chungking, during the war davs: if it sfruck very severe Kuomintang censorship, and the whole front page overnight became a blank, the ediwrs c ° ntr ii' to M 'he space with ?Z, C t Ou^ En laL Clearly he phX *? aCk tUrnirg a What followed was. for me. so : utterly unexpected, and so contrar. f to the established practice of most I formal receptions in the West that I e must describe it as it occurred. ! Imagine a hall so filled with people , that, at best. 50 or so guests might have been picked out to be presented ito China s national leaders. I had ■ thought this might happen, and had assumed that New Zealand would be J pretty well down on the list, so that we might get at best another handshake or so. But before I had settled .to my second drink, talking shop with the newspapermen. I staggered from a hearty blow between the shoulder-blades, and turned to see the sharp-pointed nose, set in the face of a Laughing Buddha, of Liao Cheng- ’ chtih Fatty Liao, as we had known him in Hong Kong in the old dav? of the China Defence League, when he was the chief liaison between Mme. Sun’s committee and the Eighth Route Army. I had first met Fatty in Yenan: 1 had last seen him in iSHI. when the Japanese guns were beginning to open up on The Peak, and we had contrived an emergency meeting with Major Charles Boxer. Chief of Army Intelligence. to see if General Maltbv would agree to ran a junkload of British arms across to Bias Bay. where Fattv had a guerrilla force. ’ organised but almost weaponless He had guaranteed to stage a diversion in the rear of the Japanese land forces in the ’ New Territories, which might have made a considerable difference to the ' speed of iheir advance to Kowloon. That scheme had fallen through. like a good many others: and Fatty had ’ spent most of the rest of the war in a Kuomintang gaol in South China ; But he had come up smiling, and j was r.nw head of the Youth Movement j for all China. j "Well, well, he boomed in a

. familiar staccato. “So you came back to China again, eh? Have you seen all your old friends V - Tve made a start. I told him. w.tr Chou En-lat. And I put :n a Lit of the people Fd like to see. just aocut a mile long, from Mao Tse-tuax to vou But I don’t suppose there s much ■ chance of getting at anybody high -P at a lime like this?“ “!>->n't vou be Lew it. Fatty assured me genially 1 told some of them already. Youll meet - m some later on. See you again He vanished abruptly. This was a.ways a habit of his: and a minute later someone pulled my sleeve. It *a» Chu Tu-nan. -Marshal Ho Lune. Viee-Prenuer « China, would like to speak to you. Memories FieyHth Route Arrrv

Of all the old Eighth Route Army ieadecs it was Ho Lcmg I had known best. I had spent » ’ ra « er * h “ headquarters in the Shansi Hills m 1938. when he was commanding the 120th Division. with Hsiao Keh« hi number two. I remembered a fcrmtd; able thicks#! figure, a Hunan accem broad as a Wexford brogue-. a mann-r as explosive as Pancho \ ilia« Ho Dung in those days had k»s»r everv man in his d:vision. ridden with hint I for and always kept the bes. me old Red Army! ar ”“2l where the same Hunan accent come surprisingly from under fur caps, and the commander and some tber veteran wearing ibe enamel.ed star •.hat snowed 10 years’ service the old Red Army- would exchange pungent reminiscence# of Kiang®. tne Long March, and forgotten actions on the fringe of Tibet. The man I found myself talking to / - munh rrw\r#» nrthOflOX GIP.C-

now was a much more orthodox dipio- ’ ma tic figure—an elderly Chinese official in the plain navy-blue serge tunic of the civil Branch. kith grev at the temples, and a grizzled clipped mous- , tache in place of the splendid cavalry ’ whiskers I remembered- Il was neariv •’0 -.ears of course, and since the end of the fighting in China Ho Lung has been very active indeed in very different work —administrative and diplomatic. He has been in Pakistan, and i m Egypt: he has governed a quarter of China, instead of the weedy marshlands of the Tangling Lake, where he once had his own little Soviet But he knew me. and greeted me as an old friend in the soft, gentle manner of senior Chinese officialdom. I remembered the same sinking change in old Feng Yu-hsiang. once the toughest of old-school warlords, in his later years as a senior Minister in Chungking. "Does Marshal Ho Lung still ride horses?” I asked through our small, nervous interpreter, who was clearly very agitated at finding himself in such exalted company. "•Not very much now.” was the answer, with a regretful bend of the bead. I asked if he remembered the Japanese cavalry horse he had lent me <it was an Aus-tralian-bred Waler, well over 16 hands, which no-one else in the Chinese army u anted* in that Shansi winter campaign. If Ho Lung never forgot a man. he certainly never forgot a horse; he beamed, raised his glass, and proposed a toast to “Reunion after wars.” “We have both fought against Japanese imperialism. Now let us drink to world peace.” A General's Naval Exploits II introduced Angus Ross, and said something of bis military record in .• the N-ZJEJT. Ho Lung summed him • up with a professional eye. and obviously approved- 1 had said “regimental commander.” Rank, or its exact equivalent, is always difficult in Chinese. “General."” Ho lAing exclaimed in English. Angus accepted his promotion without strenuous protest.

‘Then, with a sudden flash of nis old army manner, the marshal held up his , .humb in the Chinese gesture ef approval. "Yu chang-yu?” . "He savs you’ve got guts.” I told ; Angus. This idiom inear enough to jour ' being worth your salt”) is the highest of army tributes. We drank I another toast on the strength of it A Chinese military commander passed us. wearing the new marshal's uniform—a natty affair in grey, with wide cerise stripes down the trouser- . seams. • “Tell Marshal Ho Lung.’* I said to the interpreter, “that he should be wearing the uniform of a Chinese »d- -. miraL” Little Chang looked very .startled, but translated. and a twinkle in Ho Lung's eye showed that he understood. For he had once told me the fabulous story of his two-ship navy on the Yangtse. He had captured a couple of Kuomintang freighters, armed them with field pieces, and ; cruised up and down looking for Jap- ; anese ships on their wav to Hankow. I Ail this in the early 1930'5. when only the old Red Army in China had yet declared war on Japan. Ho Lung had, in fact fired the first effective shots in China’s war of national resistance, after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria—and fired them in a verv unexpected place indeed. 'To be Concluded.)