GATEWAY TO CHINA
By MARTIN HALLIWELL
THE modern traveller's first introduction to China is soul-stirring, but uncomfortable. You fly*at 55 to 18 thousand feet over the pzaks and deep wooded valleys which divide Assam from Yunnan ; but this is a height at which the magic of dipping in and out of the clouds over these glories of nature is somewhat dimmed by purely physical considerations. Only the air crew and the King's messenger, who spends his Life on such journeys " over the hump," are supplied with oxygen ; while the rest of us, breathing only the thin air, are lost in a waking torpor accompanied by pins and needles in wrists and feet. and in some cases undignified sickness and headaches.
It is chastened by this experience that you get your first sight of the yellow-red earth of China, which in turn gives way to the open green valley 6,000 feet up, in which lies Kunming. The aerodrome at Kunming, where you land, is the Clapham Junction for airborne supplies to China, and must be one of the busiest and noisiest in the world today. Those, like the writer, who knew little of Free China apart from the name and fame of Chungking, will be surprised to find that from the war operational point of view Kunming is a centre of no less importance. Through here will come sooner or later the great majority of all civil and military stores for distribution over the rest of Free China by road, air and rail. So long as the Burma Road is closed and the Japanese control the Gulf of Hainan and the China coast, Allied supplies can only be conveyed to China in any quantity by air ; and these supplies roust cover all the various needs of Chinese ground forces, Chinese and Allied civilians and U.S. air forces. Bomber squadrons of the latter relieve the situation by hauling all their own fuel and bomb supplies over from India—and getting good all-weather flying practice in the process—but the demands on the Allied air transport capacity are naturally heavy and ever increasing ; and all will pass through, or be unloaded at, Kunming.
The town, with a population of 300,000 (about the size of Bradford), lies four miles away from the aerodrome to the south- west. Its four great gates—north, south, east and west—are all that remain of ffte ancient wall surrounding the city ; two of these gates are still shut every night. Once inside you have the immemorial bustle of Chinese life surging round you, with something in the buildings and tree-lined cobbled streets to remind you also of the French, whose influence has spread up here along the railway from northern Indo-China. Another nation, too, has left its mark on the countryside ; in the last century Australian missionaries imported the eucalyptus trees which now, shade all the roads leading out from the town across the valley.
Perhaps there is time—there usually is in China—to stop for a few minutes on the street coiner and watch what is going on. . In the middle of the crossway stands a tin-helmeted policeman on a concrete pedestal about 3 feet" high ; it is wise to take no notice of his directions when you drive a car, as his discrimination between right and left is most uncertain. Next you note the incongruous dress of middle-class male Chinese—a long blue tubular cotton gown topped with a trilby hat. Then you are beset by a crowd of grinning children all calling out Ting ho (" very, very good ") to you with thumbs upraised (the V sign does not yet seem to have reached China) ; I thought how much more exhilarating is this greeting than the whining Sahib, backsheesh (" give us a tip, sir ") of Indian children.
Down the street a curious twanging noise comes from a shop where they are teasing cotton by hitting on a bowstring affair, the operation of which I could not really understand. On the right is a boy holding up two unhappy tortoises by their right hind legs, evidently hoping for a sale one day; on the left a sadly deformed cripple ladles out rice and what looks like glue into the bowls of the patrons of a crowded, chattering eating-house, with :heir chop- sticks already poised. In front a funeral procession passes, with the mourners clad paradoxically in white, and making only a per- functory show of the tragic decorum required by such ceremonies in Europe ; too many children in the procession for it to keep solemn for long. In the gutter shuffles along the whole time a string of coolies in broad-brimmed conical hats, with loads always a little too heavy for comfort dangling from their bamboo shoulder- yokes—these the symbol of patient industry which confirms to you that you are really in China. Then, as you move on, you find you have almost trodden on a little drug-sodden old man, huddled silent on the pavement and dreaming of better worlds than this.
In the shops are many commodities which have not been seen, much less manufactured, in Europe for years, but prices are fabulous. If you must buy, take not less than three days over the transaction and try not to want the article too badly. Even after the prolonged courtesies and. formalities are over the shopkeeper may prefer not to sell, but to keep the goods in his shop window to show what a fine shop his is.
The number of Chinese military headquarters in the town- secret-looking courtyards hung with national flags and guarded by a single drowsy infantryman—is legion, and there are uniforms in the street of every shade from olive green to pale yellow. Drill, accompanied by piercing bugle-calls and much ostentatious number- ing off by the right, wakes most of the town at 4.o a.m. ; but probably most of the useful work is done in the various training-schools run by American officers in the neighbourhood. The Chinese have many deficiencies of training and equipment, but none of spirit and determination when they are properly led and armed.
Here too you may, if you are lucky, manage to pin down for a few minutes Maj.-Gen. Chennault, commander of the 54th U.S.A.A.F., by now almost a legendary figure to the Chinese, not least on account of his dinner-time appetite for the hottest chillies and paprikas that China can produce (which is saying something). He has been fighting the Japanese continuously since 1937, which lends some weight to his opinion that they are now operating under such a strain on every front that they may well not be able to keep going another year. He looks ahead all the time to the days when his " boys " will be bombing Japan proper, but admits he finds the provision of air-support for Chinese ground-operations, the defence of his aerodromes and all the other problems of his huge home front quite enough of a handful for the present.
When you take off to return to India, you have one other awkward moment ; the air at 6,000 feet is so rarefied that it is only at the very end of the runway that the heavy air-liner is airborne. Then you wheel over the lake of Kunming, the last resting-place of several Jap bombers, and watch the flat-bottomed fishing craft of the Chinese print busy on their ancient tasks beneath you. After all these summer sights and sounds, you may be forgiven for finding the world to which you return—the drenched tea-gardens of Assam, the floods of eastern Bengal and the degrading poverty of Calcutta— a less satisfying place.
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