QUAKERS IN CHINA
By DAVID MORRIS
BEFORE the war with Japan the town of Chungmou, just south of the Yellow River in Honan, was a thriving market centre like a thousand other Chinese towns ; not famous or remarkable in any way, though of more importance than some other places of the same size because of its position on the east-west railway from the coast of Shantung to Sian and Paochi. When the Japanese advanced most of the inhabitants fled inland to West China. When the war with Japan ended some walked the thousand miles back to what had been their home. In the eight-year interval the whole district had been washed over by river floods yearly and the town had been bombarded by artillery and aeroplanes. In the town that had once housed over two thousand families twenty battered dwellings remained. Since then Chungmou has suffered from plague and cholera, and was occupied for brief periods by the Communists in December, 1947, and in June this year.
Yet today in Chungmou there is a new town, full of life and purpose, enjoying amenities that did not exist before the war. There are a twenty-five-bed hospital and a school for one hundred and seventy pupils ; a brick kiln has been set up to help in rebuilding the town ; foundry and draught animal co-operatives have been established, while a textile factory co-operative is being organised ; there is a nucleus of a modern transport organisation ; and adult education run in conjunction with the co-operatives has been developed. During the two occupations by Communist troops and the Subsequent return of the Nationalists, this new life in Chungmou continued almost undisturbed. Almost no one fled ; the various projects went on with their work, and the hospital coped with scores of battle casualties, Communist and Nationalist, who arrived from the fighting in nearby Kaifeng. Most of the wounded, as is usual in China, had walked the thirty-odd miles back to the hospital.
How has the rebirth of this small town in North China been achieved, a town whose tragic desolation was typical of a hundred ethers but whose inspiring revival is in many ways unique ? It has been achieved by the traditional courage, determination, patience and hard work of many Chinese peasants stimulated, led, guided and taught by a few members of the Friends' Service Unit, a Quaker organisation which is carrying on the work of the war-time Friends' Ambulance Unit. The F.S.U. in China at present consists of fifty members, men and women, of whom sixteen are British, eleven Chinese, sixteen American and seven New Zealanders. Some are doctors and surgeons, some truck drivers and motor mechanics, some nurses, some specialists in such things at X-ray work ; and all are capable of doing several different jobs and in emergency conditions constantly do so.
In addition to its work in Chungmou the F.S.U. has, since the war with Japan ended, carried on several relief schemes. In West China the Unit is still transporting medical supplies over routes where commercial transport is either unreliable or unobtainable. At Shihping, a small town in Yunnan on the trade route to French Indo- China, an anti-malaria team is working in one of the worst malaria districts in the world. Back in Honan mobile medical teams have helped to fight kola azar, a" deadly fever which particularly attacks small children. Unit doctors, nurses and mechanics have helped to re-establish war-damaged mission hospitals in Honan, work which has involved rebuilding, rewiring and the repair of X-ray plants. At Chengchow a training school for Chinese nurses has been set up, and at Hankow training is being provided for Chinese laboratory workers and motor mechanics. Elsewhere members are working in leper colonies. In 1942 an attempt was made to take drugs through the Nationalist blockade to the Communists in Yenan, but the attempt failed and no drugs reached the Communists till the war with Japan ended. Over four years later in December, 1946, after prolongeki negotiations with both sides, an F.S.U. medical team was flown into Yenan, then still the Communist H.Q. The team consisted of two doctors, two nurses, an X-ray technician, a medical mechanic and a laboratory technician, and worked in the International Peace Hospital in the caves of Yenan. Three months later Yenan was occupied by the Nationalists, and the F.S.U. team retreated with the Communists. During the next twelve months the hospital was set up when and where necessary—once for one month, once for two months, once for five months, often for less than a week. Overnight stays were made in twenty-two villages ; four hundred miles were covered. After the team left Yenan the work consisted almost entirely of treating war-wounded, and the hospital wards were usually caves, which in winter were often heated by open fires without flues, their smoke passing into the atmosphere of the interior. The beds were piles of straw on the stone floors. When supplies of vaseline gave out a locally improvised hemp-seed oil gauze was used. Bandages used for dressings were washed and autoclaved for further use. When the weather was cold and wet and the washed bandages could not be dried dressings sometimes had to be postponed. This work, in these conditions, still continues.
By the beginning of this year, therefore, the F.S.U. had some members working right in the heart of Nationalist China, most of its members concentrated on rehabilitation and. medical work in the no man's land of Honan and one medical team working in the centre of Communist-held territory. It may fairly be claimed that its position is unique. It is the only relief organisation working in China in friendly co-operation with both sides in the civil war. It seemed to the leaders of the Unit in China that here was a great opportunity to be grasped. Accordingly further negotiations were started early this summer with Nationalist and Communist leaders to see whether they would agree to an increase in the number of medical teams working with both sides and in the debatable area of Honan between the two. Negotiation in China is usually a lengthy business, but in the present case it has already ended successfully. The Com- munists have agreed that in the next six to eight months three further medical teams shall be Sent to the Communist areas, and documents have been secured which call on all Communist troops to assist the F.S.U. wherever it may be working. The efficacy of these documents has already been proved in the second Communist occupation of Chungmou. The Nationalist Government has agreed to the expansion of F.S.U. work in its territory. Both sides, there- fore, have agreed to an expansion of F.S.U. work ; all that is needed now is sufficient financial support for an increase in personnel and supplies to undertake this expansion programme Such is a brief sketch of the work of the F.S.U. in China since the war with Japan ended ; the work of a group of four different nationalities on both sides in the civil war, the work of fifty people among four hundred and fifty million. What does it all add up to ? Is it just an insignificant drop of quiet humanitarianism in the ocean of civil war and suffering ? Or is it some- thing of far greater importance ? Bernard Shaw has recently emphasised the misunderstandings caused when the same words are used by different persons of varying political back- grounds. The same word probably means something different to each person. The danger is well illustrated by affairs in China, which has a knack of giving a peculiarly Chinese flavour to Western words and ideas and institutions. Communist and Nationalist, what- ever they do mean in China, almost certainly do not mean what the words mean in the West. Nevertheless, there is a civil war in China, and it does seem to be in general between what may be called the Left and the Right. The struggle between these two forces is not confined to China. Everywhere else in the world men look on this struggle—potential or actual—and wonder what as individoals they can possibly do about it. Most feel that they are powerless to do anything to avert the threatening catastrophe. But in China at this very moment a little is being done to bridge the gap between Left and Right. More can be done. The F.S.U. is not interested in political
or religious propaganda. It is trying in a small way to relieve suffering wherever it finds it, but it happens to be working with both sides in China at the moment, and there is a chance that through this relief work and the resulting friendship formed with men of both the Left and the Right a greater result may be achieved. In China the role of the mediator in all disputes' is historic. If suffi- cient support comes for an expansion of its work the F.S.U. might be able to help fill this role.
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