Blog 2 Life in Yan’an

Dear readers, Just as I have feared, our country has not modernized enough to fight off the invading Japanese, and our Chaing Kai Shek is more concerned with fighting the communists than dealing with the Japanese, embarrassing China once again. It seems our greatest hope to stand up against foreign invaders comes from the communist safe haven of Yan’an, where Mao Zedong and the communist party are preaching the way to defeat the enemy isn’t with firepower alone but with total reform. 

It is easy to see why people from all over the country are coming to Yan’an. It seems to be the center of a feeling of nationalism. Many are looking for a better life, and Mao sees the peasants and farmers as essential to the Chinese reform and fighting off the Japanese. Mao is urging intellectuals and artists to “Become one with the masses,”  and is educating these intellectuals by having them live, work, and fight with the uneducated peasants. This level of cooperation between classes and the people of China would have never happened in the old government. 

  In a Yan’an Newspaper Mao tells intellectuals of his own time since school and how he learned for himself during the revolution and the long march that clothing is clothing and that just because it is from a soldier doesn’t make it dirty and that the peasants and soldiers aren’t dirty, and that manual labor is not something to be ashamed of.

 Even more, peasants are fleeing from the Japanese as they pillage, kill, and rape their way through China in an attempt to root out communists, and Yan’an is a safe haven for all walks of life. 

This resonated with the peasants and soldiers from Chaing Kai-Shek’s army who have been mistreated. There are stories told by the ex-nationalist soldiers about starving conditions and five or six men being tied together to discourage escape. All of these men were drafted into the Nationalist army in order to fight for the homeland and fend off the Japanese. However, the soldiers who ran away from the Nationalist Army talk of having no food to eat and no clothing to fight in because of corruption and were very shocked to see the state of Mao’s Red Army. 

Unlike Chaing Kai-Shek’s army, Mao disciplined his army and ordered them not to steal or loot from the poor peasants, which boosted his support from the people.  In Yan’an, Mao had trained his army to do three things, all of which furthered the army’s popular support one was to struggle to death against the enemy, Two was to arm the masses, and three was to raise money to support the struggle. In creating these rules and enforcing discipline, the people saw Mao’s army move further and further away from the armies of the warlords, Chaing Kai Shek or the Japanese. Seeing the Army as a protector of the people that would defend China’s proletariat and peasant population saw many migrate to Yan’an to join the Red Army in the hope of helping reform the country.