PERSONALITIES

Southland Times, Issue 20633, 3 November 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

PERSONALITIES

TWO MEN OF CHINA

(By

Ædile).

An observer could not hope to obtain a better picture of China to-day than by looking at two Chinese leaders—one represents the old regime, the other the new; one of them is Chang Tso-lin, the other is Chiang Kai-shek; one of them is dead, the other is very much alive. Chang Tso-lin was small in stature and his hair was grizzled. He wore the old Chinese garb whenever he could, and despite the efficiency of his rule in Manchuria, the modern taste he had in military matters, he slipped back into the old China in a number of ways. Here is one authenic picture of him drawn at the time when the political and military situations were both difficult. “Chang Tso-lin ambles across the courtyard. With extraordinary care, he shields a song-bird in a light, lacquered cage from too much wind and sun. His eyes are weary and furtive, his step indecisive. His garb is a thin pongee robe with a low collar from which his neck arises with some abruptness. The robe is slit at the side, a la directoire, to reveal wide, shapeless trousers of brocaded gray silk. He shies slightly as a great burly Chinese, a mass of epaulettes, gold braid, stars, high patent leather boots, dragoon sword and gauntlets, approaches. The giant draws near cautiously; he twists his warrior visage into what resembles a simpering, sycophantish smile. . Looking embarrassedly away the little man mumbles a string of platitudinous words. The giant starts —not at the platitudes, but at the tiny sentence near the end of the harangue. It contains a command to behead three men. No reason, no cogent one at least, is given.

Epaulettes backs from the Presence, bowing repeatedly. The little man turns to his song bird. Suddenly he leans forward, his eyes become fixed, intent. His head rears back and he lifts his thin voice in an appalling squall. The courtyard fill with men. “What is it Omnipotence? What is it? What is it?”

“My singing thrush! Some one will pay for this! He has not been fed properly! He has been rained upon! See—! He drops! Thou offal of Mukden! Thou leeches! Some one’s feet shall taste the bamboo for this day’s work! My thrush has contracted the pip!” That is the past-Manchu China which is passing rapidly. Turn for a moment and see the other figure, the China that is arriving, though it may be difficult to recognize his nationality in his cloth morning coat, his gray striped trousers, his white spats, and his boutonniere. He is young, not 40 when,, clad thus, he is casting aside all other wives and is embarking upon the choppy waves of matrimony.

His bride also Chinese, but a graduate of Wellesley (U.S.A.) seems to be filled with the same enthusiasm. She wears the veil and the conventional blue-tinted glasses. But the equally conventional red of the Chinese bridal robe has been toned to a lovely rose pink. Some of the older Chinese men in the room mutter into their scanty beards. They ask, what is the younger generation coming to? Now when the great Tseng Kuo-fan and the wily Li Hung-chang had married, they had scrupulously followed formulas hallowed by antiquity. Yet after a fashion, formulas are being followed here. Debonairly, the couple bow to the portrait of the bride’s deceased brother-in-law, “The Father of the Chines Republic,” Sun Yat-sen. The hired scribe intones the “Marriage Witness Writing” which announces the marriage, its date—by the lunar calendar —the clan names of the high contracting parties, their ancestry. Goblets of wine and honey are mixed and drunk.

Now comes the ceremony when the bride and the bridegroom must bow to each other. Each must follow the moment the other begins the bow. Two young bloods make a wager who will bow first. A titter arises. The bride is too quick for the bridegroom. By pretending to bob and then stopping short, she has tricked him into a full bow. This is an omen that all his life, he will obey her. And while the bride and bridegroom genuflect repeatedly, the air becomes acrid with flashlight powder. The old people bury their noses in the long sleeves of their gowns. Their eyes smart and they cough pathetically. They are roughly jostled aside by a queer breed, Chinese, it is true, but Chines who wear riding trousers, leather leggings and foreign caps that are perched with the visors pointing down the back of the neck. Orientals who calmly plant down motion picture machines and crank away.

Look at Chiang Kai-shek, Generalissimo of the Nationalist Armies of China, commander with power of life and death over a million men, anti now virtual possessor of that prize long desired, that symbol to the Chinese mind, of complete victory, Cathay’s capital, Peking.

There are many other contrasts between the two war lords of China. Young Chiang Kai-shek gained his knowledge of tactics in military schools. Beginning life first as a merchant’s apprentice in Ningpo (that adorous city of varnishes), then as a private soldier in the Chekiang Provincial Army, he received a scholarship and was sent to an officer’s school sponsored by China’s first President, Yuan Shihkai. He saw service under the President-Emperor, then drifted to South China, where he obtained a commission under Sun Yat-sen.

He distinguished himself by an unusual feat of daring. A walled city was to be captured. Chiang Kai-shek volunteered to furnish a diversion by swimming a moat with a small body of troops and attempting to scale a wall. This was to draw the attention of the defenders while the main army of attack breached the walls at a distant point. The ruse succeeded. Chiang’s detachment suffered heavily and he narrowly escaped with his life. Chiang then went to Moscow, where he studied military tactics. Sun Yat-sen, realizing his capabilities, put him in charge of the military school at Whampoa down the Pearl River from Canton. He is said to have turned the cadets into excellent officers, and to have increased the efficiency of the entire school in a manner unusual and sightly disturbing to the classical Chinese mind.

After the death of Sun Yat-sen Chiang was placed in charge of the Nationalist forces then coalescing and vaguely dreaming of the day when they would march triumphantly across the vast face of China. He cavalierly pitched out a few of the more persistent but inactive of these dreamers. He then began to elicit Chinese encouragement for his cause and sympathy by the unfailing method of bedeviling the British at Canton.

It was the Whampoa Cadets who brought up the rear of the procession when the famous “Shameen shooting” occurred. This began’as a monster anti-foreign demonstration. It turned into a brisk battle between the cadets and a squad of British bluejackets. Be the merits of the affair what they may, the Chinese casualties furnished fuel to heat the boilers of the Nationalist cause and to furnish the power of internal public opinion that started Chiang on his initial drive*

Chang Tso-lin was of decidedly another school; his was the Academy of Hard Thumps. When he has studied tactics, it has been with an ermy back of him and his head the price of a false move. He began life, as a Manchurian bandit. The legend further runs that Chang was a village youth who—fortunately for him—was away from home at the moment that brigands raided his community. They brutally murdered his father and mother and brothers. After massacring nearly the total population, they took over lhe town. Young Chang fled to the hills, swearing vengeance. Although at the time, in the early ’teens, he managed not only to collect a group of desperate men about him but to impose

his leadership upon them. His band waxed more daring and added to itself in numbers. Chang, filled with his scheme of revenge, set about learning the names and locations of the families of those who had killed his parents. Then in characteristic fashion—a fashion that seems supremely right and proper to an Oriental—he took his revenge not by slaying the killers, though they were still alive, but by carving up their fathers and mothers. In China, the sins of the sons are visited upon the fathers. He learnt much fighting with his irregulars for the Japanese on the fringe of the war with Russia. To insure himself against Chang’s depredations which were becoming more and more dangerous, the Governor of Manchuria was at last glad to “induct” Chang Tso-lin and his guerillas in the Provincial Constabulary. Chang received the rank of General. From that moment, his rise was rapid, until at length he declared himself Tuchun:

concurrently civil and military governor of Manchuria. For years he waged war for the overlordship of China. When Chang lost, he crept back to Mukden, licked his and with Oriental patience set himself to the task of rebuilding his shattered armies for yet another attempt. “The Old Fox,” the Chinese called Chang. He held a certain popularity with the people for the shrewdness and singleness of purpose that, for example, they fail to accord the equally able Feng Yu-hsiang, th© so-called “Christian General,” who has an annoying habit of changing his allegiances overnight,

But it is always difficult for the old to evaluate the new. And the surging frockcoated Chiang Kai-shek has been unpredictable. Chang Tso-lin loafs in the tranquil privacy of the Sea Palaces with their private theatres, their lacquered pavilions, their lotus pond. He must have disliked the awakening, shedding the tattered wisps of his imperial dream. But while the Old Fox permitted himself to doze and to entertain delectable visions, he equally did not allow himself to be caught. Promptly he boarded his special train, shepherding abroad his numerous wives and more numerous progeny. It was on that train Chang received his death wound. His son succeeded him, a young man who is an accomplished airman and as keenly modern as Chiang. He has been trained in war, and it is possible that the future of China will have to reckon with him. Chang Tso-lin is dead, and the new Chang is in power, but the desire for revenge is stronger than fashion&