Battle Hymn of China by Agnes Smedley

Author:Agnes Smedley
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 086358036X
Publisher: London Victor Gollancz Ltd
Published: 1943-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Women Take a Hand

When I first met old Mother Tsai, she had already emerged as a leader of the women in the valley. She was unusually tall for a “south Yangtze Valley” woman; her skin was brown, and the veins on her old hands stood out like ridges on a hillside. She was thin and hard, and when she spoke, her voice was firm and almost harsh. Her hair, touched with white, was drawn back from a high forehead and rolled in a knot at the nape of her neck. As a peasant woman and the mother of many sons, she had suffered bitterly all her life, but of this she never spoke. Her white cotton jacket was neatly buttoned up close around the neck and her dark cotton trousers always seemed to have just been washed. Though none of these people ever ironed their clothing, hers must somehow have been pressed beneath some weight. She was the embodiment of dignity and staunchness.

It was difficult to believe that she was sixty-eight, for she seemed much younger. She was, she told me, a widow with four children. Of her three sons, the two elder were in the New Fourth Army, and the younger, a boy of fifteen, helped her and her daughters-in-law till the fields.

Before the war, life in the villages had been drab and monotonous. But when the New Fourth Army had marched into the valley the year before, the world had seemed to enter with it. Many girl students had joined the Political Department of the Army; when they went knocking on the doors of the village women, the old world had crumbled. The ladies of the gentry had refused to receive them, sending their menfolk instead, and thus suggesting that the girls were prostitutes. But when the girls knocked on Mother Tsai’s door, she looked into their eyes and knew they were not bad. She invited them in, placed bowls of tea before them, and called her daughters-in-law and neighbour women to come and sit with them. And in this way the Women’s National Salvation Association was born in the valley. It grew until it had over a hundred members.

Mother Tsai’s lean, tall figure could often be seen walking along the paths from village to village, urging women to join literacy classes and attend discussion groups to learn what the war was about and how they could help. After the day’s work was done, women could be seen sitting on their doorsteps, cutting out pieces of cloth and sewing. When I asked them what they were doing, they replied: “Making shoes for the Army.”

More and more women took over the field work previously done by men. The younger men had joined the Army and the older men and boys helped in the fields or carried supplies to the battlefield and brought back the wounded. On every festival day members of the Women’s Association would go to the hospital to “comfort the wounded” with gifts of food, sing songs, and talk with the soldiers.

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