IN THE FAR EAST

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22056, 12 March 1935, Page 6

IN THE FAR EAST

I - iLAST GREAT FRONTIER GLIMPSES OF MANCHURIA ir: * • y "7" VISIT TO MUSHROOM TOWN TRAPPINGS AND TRADITIONS i BT PF.TEB FLEMING (Copyright) j, No. 111. In to-day's v ticle Mr ' Fle , m P f K gives a pen picture of normal liic in North Manchuria, as seen under recent winter conditions. Impressions by night and by day in a .small mushroom town are recounted in the author's usual interesting manner. If China is, as the Japanese claim, i ' only a geographical expression, it might | be argued that Manchuria has in recent years attained an analogous degree of unreality by becoming merely a political expression. The West, wrangling academically over the destinies of that country, studies its past and speculates about its future without any very clear idea of what Manchuria looks like at present. '. Too many people have drawn conclusions, too few have drawn pictures. Our appreciation of the major issues arising out of the Far Eastern situation would be the more certain if we had somo image of the background - from which they arose; and a traveller's impressions, however superficial, of a email town in, North Manchuria during the present winter perhaps provide a useful pendant, tp weightier dissertations on Manchukuo. Change in Three Years The town of which I write has as yet no importance and need therefore have'no name:. It might be any one of a number of towns in IVorth Manchuria —towns which appear as such only on recjent Japanese maps and which owe their promotion from the status of village to one pr other of the new rail : ways. Three years ago it was a handful of mean houses huddled behind a low mud wall, and linked with the outside world only by dirt tracks, rutted and aimless, whicli became impassable in the summer rains. To-day it is a verj different place. To-day the has reached it — reached it and pas&d on northward toward the Amur frontier. The railway, planned by the Chinese in the old daj s to short-circuit the South Manchurian and the Chinese Eastern Railways, has now been built by the Japanese with an expedition partly attributable to fear of the Russian troop concentrations north of the frontier at which the line, like a spear, ,is pointed. It runs through the vast plain north of the Chinese Eastern Railway, in this season a naked expanse of dun and chocolate, intermittently. ribbed by the plough, laced ' here and there with silver by the frozen rivers. Inquisitorial Officials In the clean, punctual, over-heated train the Chinese passengers give as wide a berth as possible to the Japanese soldiers, whose manners are not improved by the refreshments in the dining car. With a frequency which he may find surprising, if this is his first visit to Manchukuo, the foreign traveller is asked by a succession ot officials, whose duties appear to overlap, for details of his age, nationality, profession, destination, place of birth, views on Manchukuo, and (sometimes) the'train reaches its destination. Electric lights, three years ago unknown, outline the skeleton of a mushroom town, whose population has increased fantastically since 1931. In the substantial-looking station stands an armoured train, becomingly camouflaged : a reminder that, even in the North and even in a season when the bare land gives no cover to marauders, banditry is not yet dead. The traveller, mechanically confessing his age to a final official, elbows his way out into a clamorously competitive semi-circle ot droshkies and rickshaws. He now has to make an important decision: will he patronise a Chinese inn or a Japanese hotel? If he chooses the latter he. will find himself arriving at a small, new house, garishly proclaiming itself by a coloured electric sign. ; flimsy Little Boom Discarding at the door the huge felt boots, of what can only be called Ben6onian cut, which the climate of Manchuria renders a vital part of his . equipment, the visitor is ushered with smiles and many bows into a flimsy little room, usually clean, containing a low table and a roll of belling. Here he is given a form on which he must soecifv, for the fifth or sixth time that 'day his age; nationality, profession, etc.' The disadvantages of his lodging are two. Firut, that it is liable to be cold; second, that the price-four yen for one night—is, considering the circumstances, extortionate, being rouj the same as that charged by a good ' Japanese hotel in the railway zone. If, on the other hand, the traveller has the temerity to discount the caveats ° of his friends and seeks a Chinese inn, I he will find a d'ffcrgit atmosphere and .» 'tf. ch°eTpe7than at the hotel.^ts heated from below), a table, a teapot, and ( winter and in my experience) the mini&A A a-X.-sss! and pigs more athletic, than .any commonly to be found in the West. Daylight Impressions Mw m reTbMrS 3 r oF l the JaponS earrison; the' tarpaulm-covcrcl l»te of stores as yet unwarehoused, the barneu wire and randb'ags which protect the periphery of the community;. the mills' lorries driven with insouciant bravado; even the hint of swagger wi i ' which the -young Japanese civiha W(llirs hi s unaccustomed fur cap felt boots and automatic —all these are new phenomena against a background - appropriately picturesque-a bac* ground of huge and G " l P^, } Kb a trtiv ponies, men uncouth and <• bulbous in their sheepskins cart-teams crawling on the frozen nvers hke llie^ Manchuria is the last of the g frontiers, the last huge tract of land across which -men and maohinesare resistiblv advancing those assorted ' amenities and fetishes which it lß^ lsto " f " ary in the West to call the forces ot civilisation."