Red Star Over China - The Rise Of The Red Army by Snow Edgar

Author:Snow,, Edgar [Snow,, Edgar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
Published: 2013-04-16T03:00:00+00:00

PART SEVEN

EN ROUTE TO THE FRONT

1

Conversation with Red Peasants

AS I travelled beyond Pao An, toward the Kansu border and the front, I stayed in the rude huts of peasants, slept on their mud k’angs (when the luxury of wooden doors was not available), ate their food, and enjoyed their talk. They were all poor people, kind and hospitable. Some of them refused any money from me when they heard I was a “foreign guest.” I remember one old bound-footed peasant woman, with five or six youngsters to feed, who insisted upon killing one of her half-dozen chickens for me.

“We can’t have a foreign devil telling people in the outer world that we Reds don’t know etiquette!” I overheard her say to one of my companions. I am sure she did not mean to be impolite. She simply knew no other words but foreign devil to describe the situation.

I was travelling then with Fu Chin-kuei, a young Communist who had been delegated by the Red Foreign Office to accompany me to the front. Like all the Reds in the rear, Fu was delighted at the prospect of a chance to be with the army, and he looked upon me as a godsend. At the same time he regarded me frankly as an imperialist, and viewed my whole trip with open scepticism. He was unfailingly helpful in every way, however, and before the trip was over we were to become very good friends.

One night at Chou Chia, a village of north Shensi near the Kansu border, Fu and I found quarters in a compound where five or six peasant families lived. A farmer of about forty-five, responsible for six of the fifteen little children who scampered back and forth incessantly, agreed to accommodate us, with ready courtesy. He gave us a clean room with new felt on the k’ang, and provided our animals with corn and straw. He sold us a chicken for twenty cents, and some eggs, but for the room would take nothing. He had been to Yenan and he had seen foreigners before, but none of the other men, women or children had seen one, and they all now came round diffidently to have a peek. One of the young children burst into frightened tears at the astonishing sight.

After dinner a number of the peasants came into our room, offered me tobacco, and began to talk. They wanted to know what we grew in my country, whether we had corn and millet, horses and cows, and whether we used goat-dung for fertilizer. (One peasant asked whether we had chickens, and at this our host sniffed contemptuously. “Where there are men, there must be chickens!” he observed.) Were there rich and poor in my country? Was there a Communist Party and a Red Army? I’m afraid my explanation of why there was a Communist Party but no Red Army quite baffled them.

In return for answering their numerous questions, I asked a few of my own. What did they think of

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