Author: James Hogan (Huang Zhen mu)

My Friends, since I have last written a great many calamities have befallen our nation. The promise of collectivization which promised so much has been struck with a run of such poor luck as has not been seen in this country since the era following the collapse of the Qing. These are evil days. A few years ago, the Party, headed by Chairman Mao, began pushing for the rapid and total collectivization of the Agricultural sector and for the revolution of techniques vital to raising the output of our farms and our industry. I am no longer of an age where I can easily go out into the countryside to see for myself the progress being made in these endeavors, but I have asked my son to go in my stead; the things he has told me I do not find heartening. I must preface my following statements by saying that I know that collectivization is successful in other parts of the country, I have seen for myself the success of the new methods and measures. I have seen the trucks bring grain in from the country, place it into the large silos before moving it to trains bound for the Soviet Union or beyond. My son, however, has told me that the villages he has visited are racked with famine and drought or else flooding, and everywhere the stench of starvation and disease. He told me of an Incident where he happened upon a pack of creatures, he at first believed to be wild dogs scrounging in the ditch on the side of the road, upon further investigation he found them to be children, collecting the grasses and wildflowers they could. When he spoke to them, they told him they came from an orphanage in the nearby village and that they had snuck out to find something to supplement the small grain ration they were allotted. In another village, he encountered a family which was so desperate that when he shared a loaf of bread, he had been carrying for the road they attempted to offer him one of their children in compensation. The family had been on the road for some weeks following the total collapse of their harvest, trying to reach the place where the trucks had taken their food but were now too weak to continue. I am an old man. I remember such times when people placed great stock in the Mandate of Heaven. That certain regions of this country have failed so drastically in meeting the projections and promises of the collectivization that has seemed so successful across the board, perhaps there is some truth to the old superstitions.  Perhaps those local leaders that have clearly so poorly implemented the practices and policies of the Party have brought down the wrath of the heavens on the regions under their control. If this country is ever going to have the universal growth in wealth that has been shown to be possible, then we must ensure that the lowest levels of the government are loyal to the revolution and to the will of the people. We must apply more pressure on them to better emulate the Chairman and his confidants in being a guiding light, a beacon around which the people can rally rather than stealing grain and terrorizing the people.

 

Comrades, I expect we shall hear in the future of atrocities being committed by the cadres in the countryside which have lost sight of the revolution, but we must not allow these naysayers and traitors to the revolution dissuade us from our ultimate goals. Be well, I shall write more when I have the time.

My friends,

 

It has been a few years since I have last been called upon to comment on the State of the Revolution. On this I can only say that much has happened. The end of the War against Japan gave way to the War against the Nationalists, culminating in the ultimate victory of the Communist Party. Among the first and foremost actions of the Party has been the Land Reform campaign. My friends, I must confess I have had limited experience with the campaign of my own, but I have had the opportunity to speak with a great many people that have, either as a member of a work team or were present in the countryside when the reform teams came through. My own experience has been almost entirely limited to only what could be gathered from those I’ve spoken to; however, I have had an experience that I feel it necessary to share with you. Many of you know that I come from a family that operates a small freight company in Beijing, that my father started a great many years ago, before the fall of the Qing. My Brother now operates this company following the death of my father during the war against Japan. It was here that I had my only direct run in with the Land Reform campaign, being myself now too old and infirm to continue the arduous labor in the countryside. I was working in my brother’s shop alone one day when a large party of peasants from one of the villages nearby came in search of him and his wife. When I asked how I might assist them they said that their local landlord, my sister-in-law’s father had fled from the struggle session that had been planned for him. He had no sons and the only surviving family of his that they could find was my brother and his wife. They had with them a bill which they presented to me saying that my brother owed them in his father-in-law’s stead. They seemed to not realize that I was his brother, and demanded to know where he was. I told them that the owners of the shop were not home at the moment, but I would deliver it to them when they returned. They seemed to accept this answer and left; however, they told me that they would return to collect. When my brother returned, he told me that there had been similar parties moving through the city and that several of his colleagues had been presented with similar bills by peasants from villages where they or members of their families were landlords. It seems to me that these villagers came seeking further restitution than what was available from their landlords, either because they demanded more than the landlord had, or else the landlord had successfully secreted away some hidden store of wealth and so to meet the demands of the villagers they came to the cities to collect from other members of the families. I have heard of the violence being performed against some of the shop owners, though I have not seen it myself. I heard second hand of a family who were interrogated by one of these roving bands in search of more money. I have heard that the government has taken steps to curtail this practice of presenting bills which has sprung up following the expulsion and elimination of the Landlord class, however it still persists and in some cases has caused immense suffering among the people of the cities.

Dear Readers,

 

Friends, much has happened since I have last written. In the past few years our homeland has come under attack by a truly devilish enemy bent on the destruction of our nation and our way of life. I myself have been driven from my family’s home in Beijing and there is no sign of when I might be able to return there. Since then, I have fallen in with a Group of refugees bound for the Communist held territories in Yenan. As we travelled it became apparent to me that a great many people were making the same journey, indeed it seemed at times as though the whole countryside was moving ahead of the Japanese advance. Since my arrival I have seen the great progress, the communists have made in their struggle to bring about new China. Spirits are buoyant here; everyone believes that this is the foundation from which we shall drive the Japanese from our shores.

I have had the opportunity to interact with a large cross section of the communist party. While I spend much of my time travelling in the local countryside, interviewing the regular members of the party and those living under communist rule, I have on several occasions had the opportunity to speak with the leadership as well. It is here that I believe is the core of why the people are so enthusiastic about the communist party. The leadership of the Communist party, particularly Chairman Mao, has been making use o their time here to put into practice many of the policies they have promised in the past. I have seen a great effort on the behalf of the party to take the great masses of people that have come here hoping for reprieve from the Japanese and to forge them into good members of the communist party. It is here dear Reader that I am skeptical of the methods of the Communist party, effective though they may be.

In an effort to increase the unity of the front that the Party is showing its enemies, both the Japanese and the Nationalists, a new strategy has been put in place to bring everyone around to the same pattern of “revolutionary thought”. The Chairman has on several occasion highlighted the importance of the masses, and that good leadership revolves around the ability to take the general population and make them active for the revolution. With that I must agree for it is the people which must bear the brunt of the burden of revolution and who will sustain it, but there is a very strange and potentially dangerous method of reformation of the thought that I believe has the potential to spell doom for the whole affair. This “thought reform” is based reconditioning a person’s thoughts to be more in line with the party’s goals. Perhaps the most noticeable aspect of this new process was a conference that the chairman held last year where he laid out the groundwork for a new set of literary and artistic pattern where the works of the artists, the authors and the poets must be easily understood by the masses and must portray some aspect of the revolution. Increasing the availability and reach of art is clearly a boon both to the people and to the artist, but the control that the party wishes to hold over the production of art I consider to be worrying. A part of what inspired me to enter into higher education was the depth and breadth of the literature I was exposed to overseas, and I was enthused by the prospect that the revolution might break the hold that traditionalism held over the literature and art of our own nation. If the communist party is able to fully take control of it, have we not just replaced one stagnation for another? In any case it has still yet to be seen just how effective this new program is to be, and I shall be eager to watch and see if the artists and authors shall go along with it.

My friends, I shall write again soon,

Fare well

Dear Readers,

It has been the better part of a decade since the Nationalist party under Chiang Kai-shek’s leadership has taken power in the country. It seems to me that despite the success that the Nationalists enjoyed in their Campaigns against the warlords at the beginning of their Northern Expedition, much remains unchanged in the general state of the nation. The lack of effective changes since that campaign makes me worry that, despite the fervor with which the Nationalists pursued it, the change was in some way a lie or mirage thrown up to disguise the true intentions of those currently in power. The Current regime was victorious against the Warlords that stood between Guangzhou and Beijing but, has since proven to be either ineffective in its attempts to dislodge the others or else is unwilling to move against them. Indeed, it would seem to a casual observer that the true spirit of the revolution, and of the Northern Expedition, was derived from the Communist portion of the United Front and since the massacre at Shanghai it has been absent from the primary wing of the Nationalist party. If anything could demonstrate this shift in spirit, I believe it to be the campaigns that the Chiang’s forces have fought unsuccessfully against the recently formed Jiangxi Commune, where the armies that had so easily driven north are now being torn apart. Following the last failed attempt to destroy the communists, I joined an old army friend of mine on a tour of the region in question and am now as I’m writing this in the area, having spoken with a number of the locals. I have omitted a great number of names so as to ensure the safety of those who have taken the risk to speak with me, but I shall convey their words as accurately and truthfully as I am able.

These wars are not being fought in the manner with which I am accustomed, granted my experience is limited. Where I had seen great defensive works and scarred battlefields, here the fighting seems to have passed almost unnoticed to those without the eyes to see its marks due to the tactics and stratagems employed by the defenders to draw the Nationalist troops into traps and destroy them. I have met few men in my time here that are not soldiers, and most of those that aren’t are far too young or else far too old to be of much use in battle. Indeed, there are few men to be met anywhere in the province so far as I can tell, they all are off fighting, and this has made a great impact on the people here. The women have taken up the lion’s share of the field labor in the province, they are in the camps, and I have even met a few young women that have been in combat. It seems that the Communist party has had to call on the women of its territories to carry on the struggle and it has rewarded them. If the women of other provinces knew of the things which are already law in Jiangxi, I believe there would be a flood of volunteers to the cause. Here, women have been granted a great deal of equality in return for their service, they have been granted property rights, equal pay for their labor, and have been granted the right to select their husbands. The sale and purchase of wives has been outlawed and a great deal of legal protections have been put in place to allow for divorce and ensure the protection of widows and their heirs. I believe this to be part of the reason that the spirit of the revolution has not died here the way it has in other parts of the country. Here, despite lacking the class and criteria of the Marx and Engels’ ideals, despite being effectively feudal, and despite the general lack of knowledge as to what communism and revolution is supposed to be (one woman I spoke to admitted as much to me and that she only joined to escape an undesirable marriage), the people have touched upon the very essence of the revolution. That is, they have seen an injustice in their society, and they have taken steps to reverse that injustice in such a way that the whole population might benefit.

My friends, I shall write more when I am able, but I have been informed another band of soldiers is coming through in a months’ time and I wish to send this letter off before then.

My name is Huang Zhen mu, I was born as the second son of a man who made his living as the middle man between local cartels and the foreign shipping companies in Beijing in the year 1893. Among my earliest memories was the fighting that occurred in the city during the Boxer rebellion. I was given a limited education by my father and was able to read, write, and perform basic arithmetic. However, it was my elder brother that was destined for more formal education. Instead, when I turned 19 I begged my father to allow me to join Sun Yatsen’s Revolutionary Alliance. He allowed me to go and my education, though limited, made me eligible to be an officer, though weak eyes and lingering illness barred me from any combat roles. I would serve as an administrative officer for several years, even being sent to Europe with the Chinese Expeditionary Force during the Great War. It was there that a civilian colleague who was acting as my regiment’s interpreter piqued my interest in pursuing further education. He had been studying in France for some time before the war and shared with me some of his studies on western political thought and literature. I left the army at the end of March in the year 1919, intent to learn all that I could. My first arrival home that May was my first true encounter with the “Revolutionary Spirit”. There I saw those men and women, many of whom were my junior by several years, who were to be my peers and I was inspired to join them. While I did then and still do lack the constitution to carry out much of the harder labor of the task of revolution I have dedicated myself to recording all that I and hear so it may not be forgotten. To that end I began attending classes at Peking University, while working along side my father in his trading company.