REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

THROWING OFF ASIA II - WOODBLOCK PRINTS OF THE SINO-JAPANESE WAR (1894-95

Devil in the Details

“Illustration of the Decapitation of Violent Chinese Soldiers”

by Utagawa Kokunimasa, October 1894 (detail)

[2000.380.07] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

When all was said and done, denigration ruled the day when it came to portraying the Chinese foe. As the prints so graphically reveal, moreover, such disdain frequently carried both a harsh racist charge and an undisguised edge of pure sadism. The devil, as always, is in the details. The Chinese are slashed with swords; skewered with bayonets (often run through from behind, as in Kiyochika’s showing); shot at close range; beaten down with rifle butts; strangled; crushed with boulders; pounded with oars while floundering in the sea. They tumble off cliffs and warships like tiny rag dolls. In one print, a civilian caught in battle lies crumpled on the ground with a still-open parasol on his corpse, conspicuous once again by his gaudy and (in Japanese eyes) outlandish clothing.

It is particularly sobering to keep in mind that this was not on-the-scene “realism.” The woodblock artists worked largely out of their own imaginations, tailoring this to news reports from the front. They were commercial artists catering to a popular audience, and this was the war Japanese wished to see.

Admiral Ding Juchang, the Chinese generals on their horses, the occasional battlefield enemies treated as just as human as the Japanese are exceptions that prove the rule. The prototypical Chinese is grotesque. His face is contorted, his body twisted and often turned topsy-turvy, his demeanor in most cases abject. Battlefield scenes routinely include cringing foe pleading for their lives—even while making clear that the emperor’s stalwart heroes should and would pay no heed to such cowardice. The braided queue becomes, in and of itself, a mark of backwardness and inferiority; in more than a few battle scenes, Japanese stalwarts grasp this while dispatching their victim. (Pulling Chinese men by their “pigtail” was also a favorite image among American and English cartoonists until the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty in 1911, after which this hairstyle was no longer mandatory for ethnic Chinese males.)

Chinese prisoners of war, usually bound with thick rope, also drew attention. Ōkura Kōtō imagined “Captain Higuchi” (lionized for picking up a Chinese child on the battlefield) confronting three such captured Chinese—a particularly suggestive scene, combining as it did denigration of the “old” China with chivalrously rescuing “young” (or future) China, and all this in front of a piece of heavy artillery. Toshihide and others similarly dwelled on Chinese officers kneeling in supplication before their captors.

Kokunimasa offered a harsh “Illustration of the Decapitation of Violent Chinese Soldiers” that included a lengthy inscription. The benevolence and justice of the Japanese army, this text explained, equaled and even surpassed that of the civilized Western nations. By contrast, the barbarity of the Chinese was such that some prisoners attacked their guards. As a warning, the Japanese—as depicted in the print—had beheaded as many as 38 rebellious prisoners in front of other captured Chinese. The Rising Sun military flag still fluttered in one panel of Kokunimasa’s print; the stalwart cavalry officer still surveyed the scene; the executioner still struck the familiar heroic pose with upraised sword. The subject itself, however, and severed heads on the ground, made this an unusually frightful scene.

The derision of the Chinese that permeates these prints found expression in other sectors of popular Japanese culture. The scholar Donald Keene, for example, has documented how popular prose, poems, and songs of the war years took similar delight in lampooning the “pumpkin-headed” Chinese and making jokes about their slaughter. (It was around this time that the pejorative Japanese epithets chanchan and chankoro became popular, amounting to a counterpart to the English-language slur “chink.”)

Even today, over a century later, this contempt remains shocking. Simply as racial stereotyping alone, it was as disdainful of the Chinese as anything that can be found in anti-“Oriental” racism in the United States and Europe at the time—as if the process of “Westernization” had entailed, for Japanese, adopting the white man’s imagery while excluding themselves from it. This poisonous seed, already planted in violence in 1894–95, would burst into full atrocious flower four decades later, when the emperor’s soldiers and sailors once again launched war against China. Ironically, the Japanese propaganda that accompanied that later war involved throwing off “the West” and embracing “Pan-Asianism”—but that is another story.

Go to MIT VVISUALS to view the woodblock prints.

THROWING OFF ASIA II - WOODBLOCK PRINTS OF THE SINO-JAPANESE WAR (1894-95

              “Old China, New Japan”

In contrast to Kiyochika’s distinctive thematic compositions, many woodblock artists reveled in the tumult and chaos of the battlefield. They offered their audience riotous melees—congested spectacles that invite the viewer to scrutinize the scene, sort out the combatants, discover any number of intimate details. Sometimes the detail is so dense it is startling to be reminded that these popular artworks were usually tossed off in a matter of days.

Still, predictable patterns give order to this chaos. Discipline (the Japanese side) prevails over disarray (the Chinese). The sword-wielding Japanese officer and bayonet-thrusting infantryman are invariably present—and easy to locate, since their black uniforms contrast sharply to the flamboyant clothing and paraphernalia of the Chinese. The enemy’s garments vary from battle to battle but are always colorful and frequently decorated with elaborate designs. Their headgear suggests that they employ many different haberdashers. In contrast to the ubiquitous rising-sun-with-rays military flag of the Japanese, Chinese banners and ensigns feature a range of designs. Sometimes the enemy employ archaic weapons such as a three-prong pike or trident. Here and there they carry old-fashioned round shields decorated with garish face-like designs. The braided queues worn by Chinese men often stretch out like ropes or snakes; sometimes they are coiled in a bun. In short, the Chinese are depicted as being riotous in every way—disgracefully so in their behavior, and delightfully so in their accoutrements.

“Great Attack in Snow at Fort of One-Hundred-Foot Cliff Near Weihaiwei: Illustration of Major General Odera’s Desperate Fight - Commander of the 11th Brigade” by Utagawa Kokunimasa, February 1895 [2000.102] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

“Chinese and Japanese Troops: Picture of a Fierce Battle at Gaiping” by Nakagawa, February 1895 [21.1540] Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

“Sino-Japanese War: The Fierce Battle on the Floating Bridge at Jiuliancheng” by Kobayashi Toshimitsu, October 1894 [2000.023] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Read and view more woodblock prints at MIT VISUAL

THROWING OFF ASIA II - WOODBLOCK PRINTS OF THE SINO-JAPANESE WAR (1894-95

War Prints of Kobayashi Kiyochika

The energy and artistic skill of the best war prints are all the more remarkable when we keep in mind the haste of their composition. Some sense of the impressive nature of this accomplishment can be gleaned by an overview of prints by Kiyochika, the most esteemed of these artists, who is calculated to have produced more than seventy triptychs during the brief ten months of the Sino-Japanese War. Kiyochika’s impressions of the front ranged from the lyrical to the atrocious, sometimes even bringing these two extremes together.

In Kiyochika’s war, a cavalry officer stands before a horse in a quilted blanket, a rowboat buried in slabs of ice by his feet, and observes troops crossing a frozen river in the pale glow of dawn. We can almost feel the numbing cold. In a comparably crisp winter scene, three officers stand around a telescope on a snow-buried bluff at Weihaiwei, looking down on a Chinese fleet in the harbor that they will soon destroy. (Kiyochika’s early-morning colors here and elsewhere often show a Western influence art historians have called “Turneresque,” after the English master of painterly light.)

“The Army Advancing on the Ice to Attack Weihaiwei” by Kobayashi Kiyochika, 1895 [2000.417] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

“Picture of Advance Disposition of Troops at Weihaiwei” by Kobayashi Kiyochika, 1895 [2000.420] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

“Our Scout Reconnoiters the Enemy Encampment near the Yalu River” by Kobayashi Kiyochika, 1894 [2000.380.28] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

In other Kiyochika prints, a blizzard whips across an army regiment almost invisible in the blinding snow; one must look twice to see the crouching figures. Campfires pierce the dead of a winter night as a shadowy mounted figure pauses before a tent where, as we know from the Red Cross flag, the wounded are being tended. An exhausted officer asleep on the front dreams of returning as a hero to his family back home.

"Illustration of the Attack and Occupation of Tianzhuangtai” by Kobayashi Kiyochika, 1895 [2000.250] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

“Braving the Bitter Cold, Our Troops Set Up Camp at Yingkou” by Kobayashi Kiyochika, 1895 [2000.419] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

“A Soldier's Dream at Camp during a Truce in the Sino-Japanese War” by Kobayashi Kiyochika, April 1895 [2000.279] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Occasionally, Kiyochika “quotes” himself with a subtlety worlds apart from the repetitive figures and themes found in prints by less accomplished artists like Toshikata. In another winter scene, for example, officers in heavy overcoats (one mounted on another horse with a quilted blanket) are posed in falling snow before a shadowy line of soldiers with their rifles held upright like a picket fence. Another print depicts a naval officer wading ashore from a rowboat that had delivered him from a shadow warship. Behind him, sailors hold their long oars perfectly upright in the light fog—much like the rifles in the snowstorm. A depiction of high-ranking officers questioning local Chinese informants after a snowstorm frames the deceptively serene scene in a rainbow.   Read and view more at MIT Visual

The Invasion of China

 

Japanese in Wiju ( Uiju ),Korea base of operations for the invasion on Manchuria

The Japanese army, after the capture of Pyongyang and a short rest, advanced north towards the frontier. Tachimi, with the advance-guard, was at An-ju on the 5th of October, at Ka-san on the 6th, Chong-ju on the 7th, at Son-chon on the 9th, and at Wi-sun (near Wi-ju and the Yalu) on the 10th. But the Japanese scouts were at Wi-ju as early as the 6th of October, and a telegraph line from that place to Phyong-yang was completed on the 18th of that month. The Japanese found the roads in Northern Korea from Phyong-yang to Wi-ju much better than any they had met before. They had to thank the Chinese for this, as they had been obliged to mend the roads to convey their artillery to Pyongyang. About the 20th of October the whole Japanese army was around Wi-ju, on the southern bank of the Yalu. It was composed of the 3rd and 5th Divisions, which had now been formed into a corps d'armee, a novelty in the Japanese army, whose largest unit had hitherto been the division. This force was called the First Army, and was commanded by Marshal Yamagata and commanded by Lieutenant General Katsura Taro  in the field. The army was to pursue the fleeing Chinese Beiyang Arm and isolatie. the land approaches to the strategic port of Lushun (Port Arthur)

Field Marshal Count Yamagata

 

A force, composed of a division and a brigade, named the Second Army, was also being prepared for the invasion of Manchuria and move on the old Machu capital of Mukden ( Shenyang) .This was to be led by Field Marshal Oyama, who earned a repuation as a martinet, driving his men on in the depths of the Manchurian winter .A song about the hardships of the troops serving under him became popular in Japan.

                     Field Marshal Oyama

The Yalu, between China and Korea, is a broad, deep river forming a formidable natural obstacle. The Chinese general Sung Kiang, who had studies military science in Europe .The new commander-in- chief, wisely chose it as the first line of defence against the threatened invasion of the empire. As- the defence of this river has always been an important- consideration both for China and Corea, two strong towns are placed on the opposite sides of the river, Chiu-lien-ch'eng on the northern, and Wi-ju on ther southern bank. These two cities now were the head- quarters of Sung and Yamagata.As soon as the. Japanese troops reached .the Yalu they began to make preparations for crossing it. The engineers of the. 5th Division, who had arrived about the 12th of October, proceeded to ascertain the width of the river, no easy matter, as the opposite shore was swarming with Chinese soldiers. The daring of the Japanese found a solution to the difficulty. Mihara, a. soldier of the engineers, a strong swimmer, volunteered to swim across with a line, but the numbing coldness of the water deprived him of the use of his limbs, and he was drowned, his corpse floating away to the other shore

 

Not discouraged by his fate, Sergeant Miyake, of the engineers, with a soldier, whose name is not recorded, plunged into the icy stream, and succeeded in swimming across with a line, and coming back with the �desired information. It seems that the Japanese found they had not enough pontoons to bridge the river, because they began to collect timber and build .rafts. About the 20th of October the Japanese troops began to make demonstrations on the southern bank of the Yalu, now appearing in one place, and then in another, with the object of tiring the Chinese and of rendering them less watchful.

 

Marshal Yamagata had chosen for his residence a building on high ground, called the General's Pavilion. A beautiful view was enjoyed from this place ; below flowed the Yalu river ; on the right Su-ku-chong and Li-tzu-yian ; on the left An-tung and Wu-tiao-kou, and in the centre Chiu-lien-ch'eng ( Dandong ) studded the vast plain which stretched before the eye. Only on the right, there was a hill, which from its resemblance to A crouching tiger is called Hu-shan (Tiger Mountain).Marshal Yamagata in the General's Pavilion, after carefully studying the country .withOn the night of the 23rd of October orders were sent to Colonel Sato to proceed up the river to Su-ku-chong and cross the Yalu. Colonel Sato, with seven companies of the 18th Regiment, a small force of cavalry and two guns, proceeded to Su-ku-chang, and on the 24th crossed the Yalu. The Chinese forts fired upon the Japanes his maps, saw that the key of the position lay at Hu-shau (Tiger Mountain), and formed his plans.

 Battle of Jiuliangcheng Oct 24, 1894

Colonel Sato, with seven companies of the 18th Regiment, a small force of cavalry and two guns, proceeded to Su-ku-chang, and on the 24th crossed the Yalu. The Chinese side of the river opposite the Korean border town of Wiju had been fortified for about 16 kilometers in either direction with over a hundred redoubts and trenches. Chinese Beiyang Army General Sung Ching defended the river with around 23,000 troops.The Chinese forts fired upon the Japanese, and a small force of 300 infantry and 60 cavalry attacked them ; but the Japanese drove them back and stormed a fort, capturing two mountain guns, ammunition and a quantity of winter clothing. It was a very tame affair, as the Japanese had only one- soldier slightly wounded. The Chinese fled when the Japanese approached at 600 metres. Colonel Sato, as soon as he had secured his position on the left bank of the Yalu, sent a mounted messenger to inform the headquarters of his victory, and proceeded to complete the soundings of the river. . Marshal Yamagata decided to make a general attack on Hu-shan (Tiger Mountain) on the following day .

crossing the Yalu

During the night from the 24th to the 25th the engineers completed a bridge with pontoons and rafts  on October ,24 1894 undetected, immediately in front of the Chinese fortifications. . The Yalu at that place divides into three branches, the first 60 metres wide, and 80 centimetres deep, the second 150 metres wide and 3 deep, and the third about 110 metres wide. At 4.30 a.m. on the 25th the 3rd Division crossed the river and moved towards Hu-shan (Tiger Mountain), the artillery park under Kuroda taking a position N.E. of Wi-ju, to protect the passage with the mortars. Tachimi's Brigade followed the 3rd Division and took up a position on its left wing, the 5th Division remaining on the other bank ready to give assistance. On September  17, 1894, the 10,000 troops of the Imperial Japanese Army's First Army Corp, under the overall command of Marshal Yamagata Aritomo crossed the Yalu River into southern Manchuria

The Chinese, in their usual way, had been building forts for a long time as if they intended to oppose a determined resistance, but the sudden appearance of the Japanese army on their side of the river surprised and disheartened them. After an engagement which lasted from 6.15 to 7.45 a.m. they broke and retreated across the Ai river in the direction of Chiu-lien-ch'eng. The Chinese general now became conscious of the important event which had taken place, and fresh troops from Chiu-lien-ch'eng ( Dandong ) advanced in three columns to attack the Japanese. Oseko and Tachimi attacked the Chinese right wing, while Katsura engaged them in front, and after a short struggle they were defeated, some retreating again across the Ai river, and others dispersing in the mountains. The battle was over at 10.30 a.m. and at half-past eleven Yamagata was already at Hu-shan.

An-tung  occupied

Preparations were made during the night for attacking Chiu-lien-ch'eng on the following day (26th). General Katsura with the 3rd Division was to attack in the rear, while General Nodzu with the 5th Division advanced along the right bank of Ai river ; but the next morning when the Japanese advanced to attack, they found that the Chinese had evacuated the town during the night. The Japanese, though so near to the enemy, had been obliged to light fires in the night to dry their drenched clothes, and the Chinese kept up a harmless fire with their guns, probably to protect their retreat. The Japanese acknowledge their imprudence in fighting a battle with a river at their backs, but considered such a risk legitimate in the face of an enemy ignorant of the art of war. While these events had taken place up the river. Major Okuyama with three companies of infantry had descended opposite to An-tung on the 25th, and had made demonstrations against that place to prevent the sending of reinforcements to Chiu-lien-chang. The Chinese kept firing volleys with their rifles all night, but it was not until the morning of the 26th that the Japanese began to fire witli two field-pieces. As the Chinese made no answer. Major Okuyama crossed over at 9 a.m. and found that the Japanese army had already occupied An-tung. An-tung was to become the civilian headquarters for parts of Manchuria occupied by the Japanese .

They captured several Krupp guns not yet used, and 900 magazine rifles in unopened cases. An-tung had been the residence of General Sung, and his house was occupied by General Katsura, who used the furniture of his adversary ; amongst it, there were the Chinese military works of Sun and Wu and a variety of maps of Korea and Japan. The Japanese were much amused to find their country of an elliptical figure. The Japanese losses in the battles around Chiu-Iien- ch'eng were one officer and thirty-two men killed, and three officers and 108 men wounded : they buried 495 Chinese, but many more must have been drowned in the Ai river. The spoils were : 74 field-pieces and 4 macliine-guns. 4,395 rifles. 30,384 rounds of artillery ammunition. 4,300,600 rounds of small arm ammunition. The Japanese were surprised at the forts they found, and they observed that from Song-huan to Pyong-yang up to Chiu-lien-ch'eng, there was a constant improvement. But good soldiers were wanting, and they remarked that war depends more on men than things.

Feng-huang-cheng taken

The defeated Chinese troops under General Sung retreated to Feng-huang-cheng (Phoenix City), an important walled town, which  was held by General Sin with fourteen or sixteen camps. It is necessary now to remind the reader, that up to 1875 a neutral zone forty miles broad, and uncultivated, existed between China and Corea ; in the historical sketch at the beginning of the book this has been mentioned. Feng-huang was a border town on this neutral zone, and several roads converged there : it is therefore a place of considerable strategical importance. The Japanese resolved to attack it on the 3rd of November, their emperor s birthday, as they wished to solemnise that day by a victory. But these hopes were frustrated by the Chinese, for when Greneral Tachimi reached Tang-shan, a town five li from Feng-Huang, his cavalry scouts reported that on the 29th of October the Chinese had set fire to the town and retreated. Tachimi entered Feng-huang-cheng: on the 30th of October without any resistance. The Japanese captured two mountain guns, three mortars, and a quantity of rifles and tents. From the reports of prisoners, they ascertained that the Chinese army, discouraged of fighting, had dispersed : the greater part of the soldiers had fled seawards to Ta-ku-slian (Great Orphan Hill), while General Sung with a few of his men had retreated north towards Mukden. After the capture of Feng-huang, the two divisions of the First Army were separated ; the third division continuing the campaign westwards, while the fifth carried on operations to the north and east.

The headquarters of the First Army were at Chiu-lien- ch'eng, and afterwards at An-tung, and Generals Oseko and Tachimi led the van of the third and fifth divisions.General Tachimi, on the 9th of November, sent out detachments on the two roads leadinor from Feng-Huang to Mukden ; the first on the western road proceeded up to Lien-shan-kuan (United Mountain Pass) on the 11th of November, and on the 12th explored the celebrated Mo-tien-ling (Heaven-touching Pass), which is the strongest place on that road to Mukden. It found the pass strongly defended by the Chinese, and after a skirmish, in which one soldier was killed and three wounded, it retired to Lien-shan-kuan, the object of the reconnaissance having been attained. As the Chinese kept appearing in the neighbourhood of Tsao-ho-kou (Grass River Pass), thus threatening to cut the communication of the Japanese at Lien-shan-kuan, Tachimi sent orders that the detachment should concentrate on Tsao-ho-kou. The other detachment advanced on the northern road ; but when it passed Ta-hsi-kou (Great Western Ditch), it found the enemy in force ; and as its object was to reconnoitre, it retired. General Tachimi was now- aware that the enemy was in the neighbourhood of Lien-shan-kuan (United Mountain Pass) and Tsao-ho- kou (Grass River Pass) on one route, and near Ai- yang-pien-men on the other route.

Prisoner gives useful information

General Oseko, who was in command of the van of the third division, which was to act westwards, on the 5th of November pushed on to Ta-tung-kou (Great Eastern Ditch) and Tai-ku-shan (Great Orphan Mountain). One of the prisoners taken at the battleof Pyongyang was a native of Tai-ku-shan, and had been very kindly treated became very useful in obtaining information. He reported that the disbanded soldiers flying from Feng- huang had conamitted great excesses, pillaging and ravishing in all the villages ; some of them had fled to Chin-chow and others to Hsin-yen. As the latter was a place of considerable strategical importance, where roads converged from every direction, it was decided to attack it.

Japanese take Tu-men-tzi

As usual, the Japanese planned a double attack. While General Oseko was to advance from Tai-ku-shan on one road, Major Mihara, detached by General Tachimi, was to proceed from Feng-huang on another, and the Chinese were to be puzzled by a simultaneous attack in front and rear. General Oseko, with three battalions of infantry,one company of cavalry, and one battalion of artillery (minus a company) started from Tai-ku-shan on the 14th of November. On the 16th, after a slight skirmish with the Chinese cavalry, he entered Tu- men-tzi (mud-door) at 11.30 a.m. ; several bodies of Chinese cavalry and infantry attacked the place, but they were repulsed. On the morning of the 17th no trace of the Chinese could be seen, and Oseko advanced to Hung-chia-po-tzu (Red-House Village) ; at 11.20 A.M. firing was heard in the distance, and he knew that Mihara was attacking Hsin-yen on the north-east. Oseko's vanguard continued to advance, and met a body of Chinese, who commenced firing at long range, while the guns of Hsin-yen also joined in the attack.

Hsin-yen taken

The Chinese were gradually reinforced until at 2 p.m. they were about 2,000 strong, and they threatened the Japanese flanks. The Japanese deployed, and as they advanced the Chinese retreated (like a coy maiden the Japanese observed) ; they preferred fighting at a distance, and considered 600 metres as uncomfortably near. The fall of night prevented the Japanese taking Hsin-yen, and its capture was reserved for the next day ; but on the morning of the 18th, when they advanced, they found the town abandoned : the double attack of the preceding day had entirely disconcerted the Chinese, who, fearing to be surrounded, retreated westwards.

Battle at Huang-chin-tzu

The main body of Oseko's detachment at 8.30 p.m. entered Hsin-yen, where they found nine guns and a number of rifles. Colonel Mihara, who led the flank attack, left Feng Huang on the 14th of November with a battalion of infantry and a troop of cavalry videttes. On the 15th the cavalry had reached Huang-hua-tien (yellow-flower field), and the infantry Lau-yeh-mias (gentleman temple). On the 16th the infantry arrived at Ling-kou (collar-hook) ; as the cavalry was insuflicient, a section of foot-soldiers assisted as scouts. This mixed vanguard met the Chinese near Huang-chin-tzu (yellow-peak), and had a sharp engagement. On the 17th Mihara came up with his whole force and attacked Huang-chin-tzu (yellow-peak). The Chinese had already engaged Oseko's force at Tu-men-tzii (mud-door) on the 16th, and they were ol)liged now to divide their forces to meet the double attiick. At Huang-chin-tzii (yellow-peak), the Chinese stationed four camps'of infantry and one camp of cavalry.

This force, availing itself of its advantageous position oh the brow of the hill, opposed a determined resistance to the Japanese. Mihara ordered two companies to deploy on the right and left of the road, and to climb up the hill. Lieutenant Machida, who commanded the forty picked soldiers of the vanguard, distinguished himself on the right, driving the Chinese from rock to rock ; but as soon as the Japanese had taken one height, they found, as is usual in a very mountainous country, another height to be stormed. After a succession of these attacks they took the crowning height Huang-chin-tzu (yellow-peak) itself, and captured a mountain gun.

The Chinese retired to Hsing-lung-kou (eminent hook), but the principal force at Hsin-yen, during the night, retired to To-mu-cheng (knocker-wood town). While engaged with Oseko at Tu-men-tzu (mud door), the unexpected attack of Mihara from the rear alarmed them, and they retired for fear of having their communications cut off. A rear-guard was left to defend Hsin-yen, and delay the Japanese advance, but Colonel Mihara soon defeated this force and entered the city. From the names on the captured flags, and from the reports of the inhabitants it was ascertained that Generals Feng, Nieh, and Chia were in Hsin-yen, with about ten camps of infantry and 1,000 cavalry.

The Japanese mention, that, during Mihara's advance. Sergeant Kawasaki with a cavalry soldier were sent by another road to keep up communications with Oseko's detachment. On passing through a village, the sergeant separated from his companion for a short time, but when he came back, he only found his headless trunk. This was the second narrow escape of Sergeant Kawasaki ; he was one of the mounted scouts that were sent towards Phyong-yang at the end of July, and after swimming across the Tai-dong he luckily saved himself during the Chinese surprise at Chung-hwa, where almost all his comrades were killed. The combined attack of Oseko and Mihara who started from Tai-ku-shan (Great Orphan Mountain) and Feng-huang-cheng (Phoenix City), two points over fifty miles distant, was so exactly timed that it succeeded completely.

A garrison was left in Hsin- yin with the captured guns, but Oseko with his main body withdrew to Tai-ku-shan. The Japanese did not intend to advance the First Army until the Second Army, which had already landed and was marching on Port Arthur, should be in a condition to co-operate by advancing north. The First Army confined itself to spreading out detiichments like a fan, radiating from Chiu-lien-ch'eng ; the outposts were situated at Tai-ku-shan, Hsin-yen and Lien- shan-kuan, in touch with the enemy, and ready to be reinforced if the enemy advanced. The Japanese in these advanced stations suffered great hardships ; they were often without food for days, the provisions having to be brought over very steep mountain roads in carts dragged by Japanese army-coolies.

Japanese threaten Mukden (Shenyang)

For the present the plan was a defensive one, and had for its object to keep up a line of communications by driving away any attack from the north. Of course this plan was not divulged, and it  was popularly supposed that the First Army intended to march on Mukden, a city which from its having been the ancient capital of the Manchu dynasty, and containing the imperial ancestral tombs, had a great moral importance for the Chinese Government This grand scheme which was openly discussed, and probably feared by the Chinese, kept a large force occupied in defending the northern passes. People were astonished at the Japanese delay in taking Mukdfen. This rest in the military operations of the First Army, will enable us to turn our attention to the Second Army which was very active about this time.

Landing of troops Hua-yuan-k'ou Oct 24, 1894

 

The Japanese fleet for some time had been exploring the coasts of Manchuria to discover a suitable landing- place, and when their choice was made they found disagreement amongst the staff of the Second Army, who complained that the chosen spot was too far from Port Arthur, the principal object of attack.

 On the 23rd of October the transports conveying the brigade of the Second Army left the mouth of the Tai-dong river, convoyed by fourteen men-of-war. On the momino: of the 24th the whole fleet anchored at five miles from Hua-yiian-kon (Flower Garden Port), a small village at the mouth of the Hua-yiian- chiang (Flower Garden River). The weather was misty and the shore could only be dimly discerned, but before daybreak a party of marines landed and planted a Japanese flag on a hill as a signal for the transport. The quiet inhabitants of the village were struck with amazement at the arrival of this armada in the quiet harbour only casually visited by junks ; many fled in terror, but were captured and brought back to be convinced of the peaceful intentions of the Japanese.

Four peasants were brought on board and asked to sell their clothes, which were promptly put on by Japanese interpreters, who wore pigtails, and only required the local dress to be able to explore the country like natives. A proclamation in the name of Marshal Oyama was published to tranquillise the in- habitants and enforce discipline in the army.The Japanese army pushed inland almost as soon as it landed. On the 25fch a detachment was sent six miles up river, and a battalion under Major Saito matched towards Pi-tzii-wo, a town about thirty miles distant on the road to Port Arthur

The Chinese fleet did not give any trouble to the transports, and these vessels were able even to take the offensive, the Asaki Marti and another cap- turing 15 or 16 junks laden with timber and mortars. The Japanese fleet was not idle. Some men-of-war took on board two or three land officers and explored the coast. They caught some fishermen to use as pilots, in addition to four which had been brought over from the mouth of the Tai-dong. A torpedo- boat cruising near Ta-lien Bay captured a small steamer of 30 tons, which was utilised as a steam- tug.

 

Read more at Sino-JapaneseWar

 

 

 

The Russo-Japanese War

Russian officer driven mad during the battle of Mukden (Shenyang) 19 February - 10 March 1905.
Russo-Japanese war

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Battle of Mukden: Chinese Mounted Bandits during the Battle of Mukden

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The Russo-Japanese War

( Originally Published 1910 )

Russia's Schemes for Conquest—Conflicting Interests in Korea-Hostilities Begin—The First Battles—The Blockade Dispersion of the Russian Fleet Battle of Liao-yang—Fall of Port Arthur—Battle of Mukden —The Armada—Battle of Tsushima—The Peace of Portsmouth-The Effect on China

TO THE Chinese the retrospect of these five wars left little room for those pompous pretensions which appeared to be their vital breath.

Beaten by Western powers and by the new power of the East, their capital taken a second time after forty years' opportunity to fortify it, and their fugitive court recalled a second time to reign on sufferance or during good behaviour, what had they left to boast of except the antiquity of their country and the number of their people? Dazed and paralysed, most of them gave way to a sullen resignation that differed little from despair.Beaten by Western powers and by the new power of the East, their capital taken a second time after forty years' opportunity to fortify it, and their fugitive court recalled a second time to reign on sufferance or during good behaviour, what had they left to boast of except the antiquity of their country and the number of their people? Dazed and paralysed, most of them gave way to a sullen resignation that differed little from despair.

There were, indeed, a few who, before things came to the worst, saw that China's misfortunes were due to folly, not fate. Ignorant conservatism had made her weak; vigorous reform might make her strong. But another war was required to turn the feeling of the few into a conviction of the many. This change was accomplished by a war waged within their borders but to which they were not a party—a war which was not an act in their national drama, but a spectacle for which they furnished the stage. That spectacle calls for notice in the present work on account of its influence on the destinies of China.

For the springs of action it will be necessary to go back three centuries, to the time when Yermak crossed the Ural Mountains and made Russia an Asiatic power. The conquest of Siberia was not to end in Siberia. Russia saw in it a chance to enrich herself at the expense of weaker neighbours. What but that motive led her, in 1858, to demand the Manchurian seacoast as the price of neutrality? What but that led her to construct the longest railway in the world? What but that impelled her to seek for it a second terminus on the Gulf of Pechili?

The occupation of Port Arthur and Liao-tung by the Japanese, in 1895, was a checkmate to Russia's little game; and, supported by France and Germany, she gave her notice to quit. During the Boxer War of 1900, Russia increased her forces in Manchuria to pro-vide for the eventualities of a probable break-up, and after the peace her delay in fulfilling her promise of evacuation was tantamount to a refusal.

Had the Russians confined their attention to Manchuria they might have continued to remain in possession; but another feeble state offered itself as a tempting prize. They set greedy eyes on Korea, made interest with an impoverished court, and obtained the privilege of navigating the Yalu and cutting timber on its banks. This proceeding, though explained by the requirements of railway construction, aroused the suspicion and jealousy of the Japanese. They knew it meant more than seeking an outlet for a lumber industry. They knew it portended vassalage for Korea and ejection for themselves. Had they not made war on China ten years before because they could brook no rival in the peninsula? How could they tolerate the intrusion of Russia? Not merely were their interests in Korea at stake; every advance of Russia in that quarter, with Korea for vassal or ally, was a menace to the existence of Japan.

The Japanese lost no time in entering a protest. Russia resorted to the Fabian policy of delay as before; but she was dealing with a people whose pride and patriotism were not to be trifled with. After protracted negotiations Japan sent an ultimatum in which she proposed to recognise Manchuria as Russia's sphere of influence, provided Russia would recognise Japanese influence as paramount in Korea. For a fortnight or more the Czar vouchsafed no reply. Accustomed to being waited on, he put the paper in his pocket and kept it there while every train on the railway was pouring fresh troops into Manchuria. Without waiting for a formal reply, or deigning to discuss modifications intended to gain time, the Japanese heard the hour strike and cleared for action.

They are reproached for opening hostilities without first formally declaring war. In the age of chivalry a declaration of war was a solemn ceremony. A herald standing on the border read or recited his master's complaint and then hurled a spear across the boundary as an act of defiance. In later times nothing more than a formal announcement is required, except for the information of neutrals and the belligerents' own people. The rupture of relations leaves both parties free to choose their line of action. Japan, the newest of nations, naturally adopted the most modern method.

Recalling her ambassador on February 6, 1904, Japan was ready to strike simultaneous blows at two points. On February 8, Admiral Uriu challenged two Russian cruisers at Chemulpo to come out and fight, otherwise he would attack them in the harbour. Steaming out they fired the first shots of the war, and both were captured or destroyed. A little later on the same day Admiral Togo opened his broadsides on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur, and resumed the attack the following morning. Without challenge or notification of any kind, his attack had the effect of a genuine surprise. The Russians, whether from confidence in their position or contempt for their enemy, were unprepared and replied feebly. They had seven battleships to Togo's six, but the big ships of Japan were supported by a flotilla of torpedo-boats which outnumbered those of Russia. These alert little craft did great execution. Creeping into the harbour while the bombardment kept the enemy occupied they sank two battleships and one armoured cruiser. Other Russian vessels were badly damaged; but, according to Togo's report, on the side of Japan not one vessel was incapacitated for actual service.

Read More At OLD AND SOLD

THROWING OFF ASIA II - WOODBLOCK PRINTS OF THE SINO-JAPANESE WAR (1894-95

Prints & Propaganda

The Sino-Japanese War began in July 1894 and ended in China’s shattering defeat in April 1895. It involved battles on land and sea; began with fighting in Korea that spilled over the Yalu River into Manchuria; witnessed the opening of a second front on the Liaotung (Liaodong) Japanese lines of attack in the Sino-Japanese War (July 1894–April 1895) Peninsula and against Chinese fortifications at Weihaiwei as well as Port Arthur; and eventually involved a Japanese assault on the distant Chinese island of Formosa (Taiwan). On the Japanese side, approximately 240,000 fighting men were mobilized for the campaigns in Korea and China proper, along with another 154,000 behind-the-lines laborers. Battlefield fatalities were surprisingly low, numbering only around 1,400; additionally, many died of illnesses, particularly those caused by severe winter conditions. Another 50,000 troops and 26,000 laborers were deployed in the relatively ignored Formosa campaign, where Japanese losses were actually higher. Overall Chinese casualties were much greater. In the battle for Port Arthur alone, for example, it is estimated that as many as 60,000 Chinese, including civilians, may have been killed. In this moment of heady triumph, Japan did indeed seem to have “thrown off Asia” and gained recognition as a modern power, just as Fukuzawa had urged more than a decade earlier. This great demonstration of military prowess not only hastened the end of the unequal treaties that the foreign powers had saddled Japan with ever since the 1850s. It also opened the door to an extraordinary, almost unimaginable prize: the conclusion (in 1902) of a bilateral military alliance with Great Britain. As time would show, however, this proved a costly triumph for everyone involved. In taking the imperialist powers as a model even while condemning their arrogance and aggression, the Japanese had adopted an inherently ambiguous and contradictory role. And in “throwing off” China as they did—not merely decisively but also derisively—they exhibited a racist contempt for other Asians that, even today, can take one’s breath away. Lafcadio Hearn, the distinguished writer and long-time resident of Japan, immediately recognized the perilous nature of the new world Japan had entered. In 1896, the year after the war ended, he wrote this:

The real birthday of the new Japan … began with the conquest of China. The war is ended; the future, though clouded, seems big with promise; and, however grim the obstacles to loftier and more enduring achievements, Japan has neither fears nor doubts. Perhaps the future danger is just in this immense self-confidence. It is not a new feeling created by victory. It is a race feeling, which repeated triumphs have served only to strengthen. (Quoted from Hearn’s book Kokoro by Shumpei Okamoto in Impressions of the Front.)

Nothing reveals this “race feeling” more graphically than the lively woodblock prints through which Japanese on the home front visualized—and grew rapturous over—what was taking place. Although the Sino-Japanese War lasted less than a year, woodblock artists churned out around 3,000 works of ostensible battlefront “reportage”—amounting, as Donald Keene has pointed out, to an amazing ten new images every day.

“Our Forces’ Great Victory and Occupation of Jiuliancheng”
by Watanabe Nobukazu, November 1894

[2000.380.37] Sharf Collection, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

This was not “high art.” The woodblock print itself was a popular art form that dated back only to the 17th century and found its audience in an emerging class of ordinary city dwellers. The prints were neither costly nor meant to be cherished and preserved as timeless creations. They were designed to amuse and entertain—and to introduce an untidy mass audience to worlds of hitherto unimagined beauty and fascination, whether this be courtesans and actors in the pleasure quarters, or places the print viewer might never personally see, or purely imagined realms of heroes, villains, ghosts, grotesqueries, and erotic indulgence. In subject, style, and audience, the exuberant woodblock prints were the antithesis of most things associated with tasteful upper-class classical art.

What we now regard as the great flowering of the woodblock-print tradition ended at the very end of the feudal era with artists of surpassing genius such as Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858). The “Meiji prints” that followed were less esteemed. Even generations later, after collectors and connoisseurs had belatedly come to recognize the enormous creativity and enduring value of the feudal-era prints—had accorded them, as it were, a kind of “classic” stature of their own—the prints of the modern era were generally held in low regard.

It is only in recent decades that the Meiji prints have drawn serious attention. Partly, it must be acknowledged, this came about because they were lying around in considerable quantity and much less expensive to collect than the suddenly pricey feudal prints. Partly, too, this rise in interest occurred because these later prints were belatedly seen to have a distinctive vigor all their own.

There was, however, a third factor behind the rediscovery of Meiji prints. As historians began to turn increasing attention to “popular” culture (beginning around the 1960s), and to place more weight on studying “texts” that went beyond written documents per se, graphics and images of every sort were suddenly recognized to be a vivacious way of visualizing the past. One could, in effect, literally see what people in other times and places were themselves actually seeing—and then try to make sense of this. One could “read” visual images much as one might read the written word—not simply as art, but also as social and cultural documents.

READ MORE AT MIT VISUALIZATION

 

American Prisoners of War in China

The Korean War - The Chinese Intervention

3 November 1950-24 January 1951

They came out of the hills near Unsan, North Korea, blowing bugles in the dying light of day on 1 November 1950, throwing grenades and firing their "burp" guns at the surprised American soldiers of the 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division. Those who survived the initial assaults reported how shaken the spectacle of massed Chinese infantry had left them. Thousands of Chinese had attacked from the north, northwest, and west against scattered U.S. and South Korean (Republic of Korea or ROK) units moving deep into North Korea. The Chinese seemed to come out of nowhere as they swarmed around the flanks and over the defensive positions of the surprised United Nations (UN) troops. Within hours the ROK 15th Regiment on the 8th Cavalry�s right flank collapsed, while the 1st and 2d Battalions of the 8th Cavalry fell back in disarray into the city of Unsan. By morning, with their positions being overrun and their guns falling silent, the men of the 8th Cavalry tried to withdraw, but a Chinese roadblock to their rear forced them to abandon their artillery, and the men took to the hills in small groups. Only a few scattered survivors made it back to tell their story. The remaining battalion of the 8th Cavalry, the 3d, was hit early in the morning of 2 November with the same "human wave" assaults of bugle-blowing Chinese. In the confusion, one company-size Chinese element was mistaken for South Koreans and allowed to pass a critical bridge near the battalion command post (CP). Once over the bridge, the enemy commander blew his bugle, and the Chinese, throwing satchel charges and grenades, overran the CP.

Elements of the two other regiments of the 1st Cavalry Division, the 5th and 7th Cavalries, tried unsuccessfully to reach the isolated battalion. The 5th Cavalry, commanded by then Lt. Col. Harold K. Johnson, later to be Chief of Staff of the Army, led a two-battalion counterattack on the dug-in Chinese positions encircling the 8th Cavalry. However, with insufficient artillery support and a determined enemy, he and his men were unable to break the Chinese line. With daylight fading, the relief effort was broken off and the men of the 8th Cavalry were ordered to get out of the trap any way they could. Breaking into small elements, the soldiers moved out overland under cover of darkness. Most did not make it. In all, over eight hundred men of the 8th Cavalry were lost�almost one-third of the regiment�s strength�in the initial attacks by massive Chinese forces, forces that only recently had been considered as existing only in rumor.

Other elements of the Eighth Army were also attacked in the ensuing days, and it fell back by 6 November to defensive positions along the Ch�ongch�on River. However, as quickly as they had appeared, the Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) disappeared. No additional attacks came. The Chinese units seemed to vanish back into the hills and valleys of the North Korean wastelands as if they had never been. By 6 November 1950, all was quiet again in Korea.

Strategic Setting

The large-scale Chinese attacks came as a shock to the allied forces. After the breakout from the Pusan Perimeter and the Inch�on landings, the war seemed to have been won. The desperate defensive fighting of June was a distant memory, as were the bloody struggles to hold the Naktong River line in defense of Pusan in August and early September. General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, the Far Eastern Command Theater Commander, had triumphed against all the odds by landing the X Corps, consisting of the 1st Marine Division, the 7th Infantry Division, and elements of ROK Marines at the port of Inch�on

near Seoul on 15 September. Breaking out from the Pusan Perimeter four days later, Eighth Army defeated and then pursued the remnants of the North Korean People�s Army (NKPA) up the peninsula by many of the same roads over which they had retreated a mere two months before. On 29 September Seoul was declared liberated.

As the victorious UN forces pursued the fleeing NKPA, MacArthur was authorized by President Harry S. Truman to go north of the pre-June boundary, the 38th Parallel, while enjoined to watch for any indications that the Soviets or Chinese might enter the war. Korea was seen by most at the time as just part of the overall struggle with world communism and perhaps as the first skirmish in what was to be World War III. MacArthur, convinced that he could reunify all of Korea, moved his forces north. Lt. Gen. Walton H. Walker�s Eighth Army advanced up the west coast of Korea to the Yalu River, while Maj. Gen. Edward M. "Ned" Almond�s independent X Corps conducted amphibious landings at Wonsan and Iwon on the east coast. Almond�s units moved up the coast and to the northeast and center of Korea to the border with China. Until the attacks by the CCF at Unsan, the war thus seemed on the verge of ending with the UN forces merely having to mop up NKPA remnants.

Read more at The Korean War - The Chinese Intervention

World: China's War with India

The 1962 India China War (real)1962 中印战争 : Why it happened ?

 

On Oct. 20, 1962, some 20,000 Chinese troops poured out of the Himalayas overlooking India's North East Frontier Agency (NEFA). Other Chinese forces marched through the rocky wastes of the Ladakh region of Kashmir, about 1,000 miles to the west. Outgunned and outmanned by the invaders, the ill-equipped Indian army fell back. After a month of smashing Chinese victories, much of northern India lay open to conquest. But suddenly the invaders stopped dead in their tracks. Radio Peking announced that "on its own initiative" China was declaring a ceasefire. Chinese troops pulled back from the front, in some cases by as much as 60 miles. It was all being done, the Chinese boasted, so that a speedy "peaceful settlement of the boundary question" that had touched off the month-long conflict could be worked out.

That earlier clash is now being studied by analysts seeking clues to China's aims in the current war. Historians now generally agree that the Chinese invasion of India had a limited goal: to establish control over a long-disputed desert plateau called the Aksai Chin. For centuries, caravans linking Tibet with China's remote Sinkiang province had traversed the area, whose border had never been clearly marked. So tenuous was the Indian presence that it took two years for India's border police to discover a paved highway that the Chinese had constructed in 1956-57.

In the months before the invasion, Jawaharlal Nehru, then India's Prime Minister, cast aside his policy of peaceful coexistence with Communists. He demanded that the Chinese quit the plateau and ordered his own army to occupy it. Attempts to resolve the dispute broke down, and units skirmished in Kashmir. But even during the attack, the nations maintained diplomatic relations—as Peking and Hanoi have done in the present crisis.

The Sino-Indian border conflict coincided roughly with the U.S.-Soviet clash over Russian missiles in Cuba. There is no evidence to prove that the Chinese attacked when they did to take advantage of Soviet preoccupation elsewhere. Once their grip on the Aksai Chin was secure, the Chinese withdrew from land they had occupied in NEFA (now known as Arunachal Pradesh) and offered to negotiate a mutually acceptable border in Kashmir. The Indians, whose call for assistance was answered by an outpouring of arms from Britain and the U.S., refused to discuss the matter until the Chinese completely departed from Aksai Chin, which they still retain. Today a few Chinese and Indian troops still face each other in the mountain passes of the former battleground. And on the official maps of both countries, the borders are still drawn in exactly the same places they were before China's invasion.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,948427,00.html#ixzz1R4o1IRW3

A Nervous China Invades Vietnam

Early in the morning of Feb. 17, 1979, Chinese artillery batteries and multiple rocket launchers opened fire all along the Vietnamese border with protracted barrages that shook the earth for miles around. Then 85,000 troops surged across the frontier in human-wave attacks like those China had used in Korea nearly three decades before. They were decimated: the well-dug-in Vietnamese cut down the Chinese troops with machine guns, while mines and booby traps did the rest. Horrified by their losses, the Chinese quickly replaced the general in charge of the invasion that was meant, in Beijing's words, to teach Vietnam a lesson, and concentrated their attack on neighboring provincial capitals. Using tanks and artillery, they quickly overran most of the desired towns: by March 5, after fierce house-to-house fighting, they captured the last one, Lang Son, across the border from Pingxiang. Then they began their withdrawal, proclaiming victory over the Cubans of the Orient, as Chinese propaganda had dubbed them. By China's own estimate, some 20,000 soldiers and civilians from both sides died in the 17-day war. Who learned the bigger lesson? The invasion demonstrated a contradiction that has forever bedeviled China's military and political leaders: good strategy, bad tactics. The decision to send what amounted to nearly 250,000 troops into Vietnam had been taken seven months before and was well-telegraphed to those who cared to listen. When Deng Xiaoping went to Washington in January 1979 to cement the normalization of China's relations with the United States, he told President Jimmy Carter in a private meeting what China was about to do--and why. Not only did Beijing feel Vietnam was acting ungratefully after all the assistance it had received during its war against the U.S., but in 1978 Hanoi had begun expelling Vietnamese of Chinese descent. Worst of all--it was cozying up to Moscow. In November 1978 Vietnam signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation with the Soviet Union. A month later the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia, a Chinese ally. Although Hanoi said it was forced to do so to stop Pol Pot's genocide and to put an end to his cross-border attacks against Vietnam, Deng saw it as a calculated move by Moscow to use its allies to encircle China from the south. Soviet adventurism in Southeast Asia had to be stopped, Deng said, and he was calculating (correctly, it turned out) that Moscow would not intervene in a limited border war between China and Vietnam. Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said Deng's explanation to Carter of his invasion plans, with its calculated defiance of the Soviets, was the single most impressive demonstration of raw power politics that he had ever seen. At the time Deng was consolidating his position as unchallenged leader of China. Having successfully negotiated normalization of relations with Washington, he wanted to send a strong signal to Moscow against further advances in Asia. He also thought the Carter Administration was being too soft on the Soviets, although he did not say as much to his American hosts. Hanoi, for its part, was unfazed by Deng's demonstration of raw power. The Vietnamese fought the Chinese with local militia, not bothering to send in any of the regular army divisions that were then taken up with the occupation of Cambodia. Indeed, Hanoi showed no sign of withdrawing those troops, despite Chinese demands that they do so: the subsequent guerrilla war in Cambodia would bog down Vietnam's soldiers and bedevil its foreign relations for more than a decade. The towns captured by the Chinese were all just across the border; it is not clear whether China could have pushed much farther south. Having lost so many soldiers in taking the towns, the Chinese methodically blew up every building they could before withdrawing. Journalist Nayan Chanda, who visited the area shortly after the war, saw schools, hospitals, government buildings and houses all reduced to rubble. The war also showed China just how outdated its battlefield tactics and weaponry were, prompting a major internal review of the capabilities of the People's Liberation Army. The thrust for military modernization continues to this day, even as the focus of China's generals has shifted from Vietnam back to Taiwan--a pesky little irritant that could cause Beijing even bigger problems if it decides to administer another lesson.

Time

China's Numbers Are Shorter Than Ours

Here are seven random numbers. Sort of like a telephone number, but arranged vertically. Take a glance — just a glance — then pause, take out a piece of paper and see how many you can recall.

Done?

According to the French neurologist and mathematician Stanislas Dehaene, about 50 percent of English speakers can remember all seven numbers. I'm in the other 50 percent. When people give me their phone number, I can make it about five digits through, then I moisten my finger and try to write the last two on the phone's surface (but that's just me).

If, however, you are a Chinese speaker, you tend to do much better. The average Chinese speaker can memorize nine numbers in this same amount of time.

Why The Difference?

The difference, says Dehaene, is how the words sound in your head. The Chinese words for the first nine numbers are all short, concise and bullet-like: "yi," "er," "san," "si," "wu," "liu," "qi," "ba," "jiu." He timed them and they average about a quarter of a second each.

 

In English we start with "one", "two", but "three" can stretch out a bit and "seven" is a real slower-downer, being two syllables long, so the English number-words take a little longer, a third of a second each.

Adam Cole/NPR

Collectively, says Dehaene, the difference matters. Chinese speakers can download nine numbers in two seconds, English speakers only seven. Dehaene thinks our brains scoop up information in two-second gulps, or loops, so the Chinese are regularly getting a number-retention advantage just because their number words are shorter.

Could this explain why Chinese students have lately (in Singapore and Shanghai) jumped to the top of international teenage math testing? I doubt it, though it can't hurt to be able to process numbers more quickly through your head.

The Other Advantage

I often hear about the other Chinese language advantage. Asian number-words (Chinese, Korean and Japanese) follow a regular pattern. "Eleven" is written as ten/one. "Twelve" is ten/two, "Thirteen" ten/three and so on. We, on the other hand, serve word-cocktails. "Eleven" doesn't make you think about its ingredients, ten and one; it sounds like something about bread (leaven). Same with "twelve"; you can hear the t for two in it, but what's with the "welve"? There's no clear pattern here. This isn't good, says math writer Alex Bellos:

Experiments have repeatedly shown that Asian children find it easier to learn to count than Europeans. In one study with Chinese and American 4- and 5-year-olds, the two nationalities performed similarly when learning to count to 12, but the Chinese were about a year ahead with higher numbers. A regular system (of number-words) also makes arithmetic clearer to understand.

Read more at NPR

Rise and rise of China

As an aggressive China unleashes surging nationalism and national pride, a timid India fumbles along. Not surprisingly, the world is talking about China.

As China begins to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party, it seems to be fine-tuning its nationalism as a weapon against the West which is applying increasing pressure on Beijing to open up not just its economy but also its politics. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has just been on a tour of Europe at a time when the European economy is in shock. He has extended help to troubled eurozone countries like Hungary, Greece and Ireland by offering to buy euro bonds worth billions of dollars from China’s huge foreign exchange reserves of more than a trillion dollars.

This is part of the nationalist fervour that the Communist Party of China has been promoting on the eve of its 90th anniversary. With China emerging as the second largest economy (by GDP count) in the world (its per capita income of $3,000 still remains far below that of developed countries which is pegged at $30,000) and sitting pretty on a pile of dollars through trade surpluses, it is going back to its communist past to bolster its nationalism and flex its economic muscles.

While articles have appeared in various online media in China accusing Chairman Mao Tse-tung of causing the deaths of some 50 million people — most analysts abroad have estimated the toll to be 30 million — the Chinese Communist Party has revived the idea of communist solidarity to counter the clamour of Chinese liberals. The anti-Mao articles in online media have been removed. Strangely, a recently risen 61-year-old communist leader, Mr Bo Xilai, says the Wall Street Journal is the new messiah of communists. His campaign with its own theme song has impressed Beijing’s top echelons and emerged as a celebratory icon for the party anniversary.

As many as 90 Ministers and middle-level CPC leaders recently sang the theme song collectively: “Without the Communist Party, there would be no New China…” This is said to be a move to counter the nascent demand of the fringe liberals that the actual contribution of the Communist Party to China’s eminence should be re-assessed.

For us in India, the upsurge of Chinese nationalism, seen in the revival of the Mao cult, China’s foray into Europe (and earlier Africa), the launch of the first Chinese-built aircraft carrier, the reworking of the Chinese national base at Hanan island and attempts at gaining padding facilities for the Chinese Navy in Myanmar, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, is ominous.

The Chinese are simultaneously strengthening their offensive capability in the Tibetan plateau, extending rail heads to the border with India. The recent revelations through satellite images of China building a series of dams on the Brahmaputra, which originates in south-western Tibet as the Yarlung Tsangpo and flows through southern Tibet before it enters India’s North-East, all fall in one category. That is, China is seeking to create a ring around India of bases to establish logistical advantage that should serve as a warning to us without the Chinese having to move their forces closer to our border.

This was evident when Chinese Army engineers objected to the construction of a road on Indian territory near the Line of Actual Control last year, but our Government underplayed the threat and dismissed it as a minor event. Satellite images of dams being built along the Brahmaputra’s course through Tibet to divert the water of the river have fetched a muted response from the Government of India. New Delhi seems to have meekly accepted Beijing’s explanation that there would be no diversion of water on account of the dams despite the satellite images indicating to the contrary.

Read more at The Pioneer

China's workforce population at a turning point

Decrease of workforce population expected from 2013 onward / Aging process gains momentum / Effects of termination of one-child policy questionable

According to the latest census, China has a population of around 1.34 billion people, though population growth has nearly halved in the past decade compared to the decade before. Furthermore, population aging increased further not least due to the fact that according to estimates some 400 million fewer children were born as a result of the one-child policy introduced in 1978. The effects of these developments will start to be felt on the Chinese labor market as early as this decade.

"Even if the one-child policy were relaxed or lifted, the decline in the workforce potential could be alleviated but no longer prevented," says Professor Michael Heise, Chief Economist and Head of Corporate Development at Allianz. The turning point for China's labor market will be reached in 2013, according to findings from the recent Allianz Demographic Pulse. Further wage increases only seem to be a question of time, while Chinese companies have already begun to relocate their labor-intensive production operations to the interior of the country or even to Vietnam, Bangladesh or Cambodia in reaction to rising labor costs in the coastal regions.

One-child policy to blame?

With working age population shrinking on the one hand, and life expectancy increasing on the other, the aging process gains momentum. Today there are 19 people aged 60 and older per 100 people of employable age, by 2050 that ratio is expected to reach 64 to 100. Against this backdrop critics are calling for the one-child policy to be relaxed or lifted. However, since birth rates are falling nearly everywhere in the world, the question arises as to whether the one-child policy alone is to blame for the decline in China's birth rate or whether economic trends are also responsible.

Read more at Alliance

 

Rail linking Europe expected to open up China's less-developed West

China's new transcontinental rail freight route is undergoing final testing before launch. The new rail route witnessed its official opening on Thursday night, after three test runs since March last year.(Sources: Chinanews.com File Photo)

CHONGQING, July 1 (Xinhua) -- A cargo train filled with laptops and LCD screens has left Chongqing, a mega-city in China's less-developed western regions, starting its 13-day trip to Duisburg, Germany, which marks the official launch of the new transcontinental rail freight route.

The new rail route witnessed its official opening on Thursday night, after three test runs since March last year.

Clattering out of the station at about 9 p.m., the cargo train is set to travel 11,179 kilometers across the far western Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, before finally reaching Germany.

The route offers a major shortcut to the more traditional sea trade routes from Shanghai and Guangzhou, cutting travel time to Europe from about 36 days by container ship to just 13 days by freight train, said Huang Qifan, mayor of the inland business hub.

Huang said that the train is also safer and less expensive than sea transport.

Though the rails have been there for over ten years, the route is new as no train services linking Chongqing and Europe have been provided before due to complicated customs checks and cargo transfers, according to Ma Zhongyuan, director of Chongqing customs.

Last year, China signed a strategic agreement with Russia and Kazakhstan to open the new freight route, as the country is trying to build the inland labor-rich municipality into an international high-tech hub, especially for laptops.

Foxconn, the world's biggest contract electronics supplier, Acer, Taiwan's leading computer maker, and Hewlett-Packard(HP) are already in place in Chongqing to produce laptops.

In the first five months this year, Chongqing sold 2.43 million laptop computers abroad. The exports were valued at 840 million U.S. dollars, accounting for 20 percent of the city's total export value.

The city's export of new- and high-tech products totaled 14.26 billion in the period, up 182.5 percent year-on-year.

Read more at Xinhuanet

Christianity: China's best bet?

As more Chinese turn to Christianity, the state is torn between embracing its benefits and the desire to assert control.

There are more than 55,000 churches in China, with more being built to accommodate the growing number of churchgoers [EPA]

Every night, when Yang prays with her seven-year-old daughter, she knows that she is doing something illegal. Like millions of other Chinese Christians, Yang refuses to be a member of one of the official state-sanctioned churches. Instead, she gathers twice a week with two dozen other Protestants in a private living room to pray and sing - far away from the gaze of the Communist Party.

She says she is not opposed to the Chinese government at all, but just wants the freedom of religion that is guaranteed in the Chinese constitution. And she wants her daughter to grow up as a Christian. In China's state-sanctioned churches it is prohibited to share faith with anyone younger than 18.

"Our life has become so hectic, there is so much pressure. When my husband left me, I was devastated. But one of my friends took me to one of their gatherings and I realised that someone loves me. I want my daughter to grow up knowing that there is more in life than just money. I want her to care more about other people," Yang says.

China is witnessing a renaissance of faith, especially Christianity [EPA]

Officially atheist, Communist China is witnessing a massive rise in religiosity. Recent surveys have found that one in every three Chinese consider themselves to be religious.

"All Chinese religions have been growing, especially popular or 'folk religion'," explains Daniel Bays, a professor of history and the director of the Asian Studies programme at Calvin College in Michigan.

"Protestant Christianity seems to be growing fastest, because it is congregational, providing a social-belonging aspect, leaders can be self-proclaimed, not needing formal credentials."

Historically, China's policies on religion have veered between approval, bloody repression and grudging tolerance.

After the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the new regime was largely tolerant of religion, believing it to be a backward vestige of the country's imperial past and thus doomed to extinction. But, like other religions, Christianity suffered during the mass nationalism and atheism of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, it was viewed as a foreign doctrine that served the interests of capitalist imperialism - an ideology that led to decades of bloody persecution.

Read more at Aljazeera

Bai Ling reveals dark memories of Chinese army

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  FILE - In this file photo taken Nov. 7, 2007, Chinese actress Bai Ling arrives to …

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  FILE - In this file photo taken March 12, 2009, Bai Ling arrives at the premiere …

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Actress Bai Ling said she is confronting a dark chapter from her past: sexual abuse she suffered as a teenager at the hands of Chinese army officers.

Bai, 44, who was a soldier in a People's Liberation Army performance troupe from age 14 to 17, told The Associated Press in a recent interview that she was "opening a wound that was very secret to myself, that even my parents don't know."

Therapy she received during a U.S. reality TV series helped her understand what she endured in the 1980s and the psychological marks it left on her, Bai said.

She was pressed to have sex with her superiors, with one encounter leading to pregnancy and an abortion under an assumed name, Bai said, adding that other women serving with her in Tibet were also forced into sex and regularly plied with alcohol.

Bai stressed that she blames individual officers and not the Chinese government for events that have haunted her life and work.

The actress ("The Crow," ''Red Corner," TV's "Entourage") said she worries about how her revelations on VH1's "Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew" will be received. The show, which airs Sunday, is in its fifth season.

"The only comfort is that I'm using this platform to help others. I know that my story is so powerful and honest and so simple," Bai said. "Even if I can help one child and make them feel they haven't been forgotten, that's the only comfort I have."

Bai "did go through something terrible and was able to access it and deal with it," said Dr. John Sharp, part of the "Celebrity Rehab" treatment team this season. He is a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and a practicing psychiatrist.

She had deflected memories of "these men who were sexually abusing her" so she wouldn't fall apart psychologically, Sharp said. "But when she got in to a safe place ... she was able to admit to herself what she'd been dealing with."

Until now, Bai said, she didn't even perceive her treatment by her army superiors as abuse: "Because of the Chinese culture of obedience, you don't ask questions. ... You follow and obey."

               Read more at Yahoo

How China Won and Russia Lost

Two dissimilar economic paths

On a dark November night in 1978, 18 Chinese peasants from Xiaogang village in Anhui province secretly divided communal land to be farmed by individual families, who would keep what was left over after meeting state quotas. Such a division was illegal and highly dangerous, but the peasants felt the risks were worth it. The timing is significant for our story. The peasants took action one month before the “reform” congress of the party was announced. Thus, without fanfare, began economic reform, as spontaneous land division spread to other villages. One farmer said, “When one family’s chicken catches the pest, the whole village catches it. When one village has it, the whole county will be infected.”

Ten years later, in August of 1988, Mikhail Gorbachev lifted his nation’s 50-year-old prohibition against private farming, offering 50-year leases to farm families who would subsequently work off of contracts with the state. Few accepted the offer; Russian farmers were too accustomed to the dreary but steady life on the state or collective farm. Thus began reform of agriculture in Soviet Russia.

The results in each country could not have been more different. Chronically depressed Chinese agriculture began to blossom, not only for grain but for all crops. As farmers brought their crops to the city by bicycle or bus, long food lines began to dwindle and then disappear. The state grocery monopoly ended in less than one year. Soviet Russian agriculture continued to stagnate despite massive state subsidies. Citizens of a superpower again had to bear the indignity of sugar rations.

As farmers brought their crops to the city by bicycle or bus, long food lines began to dwindle and then disappear.

These two examples point to the proper narrative of reform in Gorbachev’s Russia and Deng Xiaoping’s China. Our narrative contradicts much received doctrine. The standard account is that China succeeded because a wise party leadership deliberately chose gradualism, retained the monopoly of the Communist Party after rebuffing democracy at Tiananmen Square, and carefully guided the process over the years. The narrative says that Russia failed because the tempestuous Gorbachev ignored the Chinese reform model, moved too quickly, and allowed the party monopoly to fall apart. This standard account is incorrect. Deng Xiaoping and his supporters, contrary to popular legend, did not agree on a reform program at the Third Plenum of the Eighth Party Congress in 1978, which installed him in power. A Chinese reform official by the name of Bao Tong later admitted as much: “In fact, reform wasn’t discussed. Reform wasn’t listed on the agenda, nor was it mentioned in the work reports.”¹

Throughout the reform process, the Chinese Communist Party simply reacted to (and wisely did not oppose) bottom-up reform initiatives that emanated largely from the rural population. Deng Xiaoping’s famous description of Chinese reform as “fording the river by feeling for the stones” is not incorrect, but it was the Chinese people who placed the stones under his feet.

Mikhail Gorbachev became general secretary of his party in March of 1985. By that time, he knew that the Chinese reforms were successful. His reforms, contrary to the popular narrative, closely mimicked China’s. He proposed to lease land to peasants, establish free trade zones, promote small cooperative businesses, and set up joint ventures. The difference was that Gorbachev imposed these changes from above, on an urban economy in which virtually all citizens worked for the state. Gorbachev’s reforms either were ignored or they were enacted with perverse consequences. Bottom-up reforms worked in China; top-down reforms failed in Russia.

Both countries began serious reform after the passing of a leader (or leadership) that abhorred reform. Deng Xiaoping and his allies succeeded Mao in 1978 after a brief power struggle with hardliners. Gorbachev succeeded the initial beneficiaries of Stalin’s purges of the 1930s, who rose quickly as young men to replace those who were executed. The forgettable Konstantin Chernenko was the last in line; there was no choice but to turn to a relative newcomer when he died. For Gorbachev, the horrors of the Stalin era were in the distant past. For Deng Xiaoping and his supporters, the excesses of Mao — the starvation of the Great Leap and the “reeducations” of the Cultural Revolution — were recent and personal experiences. Whereas Stalin had physically annihilated independent-minded party officials, Mao permitted them to survive, subsequently to take over after he was gone. Gorbachev worked his way up the party ladder as a typical apparatchik; although touted as a reformer, he had few reform ideas. His Politburo and Central Committee comrades had no real stomach for reform. Deng Xiaoping also had not worked out a reform program, but he knew enough not to oppose reforms that work (“I don’t care if it is a black or yellow cat as long as it catches mice”).

Real reforms, whether dictated from the top or bubbling up from below, require a reform constituency. In the Chinese case, a large percentage of the population was recovering from the catastrophes of the Mao years. Rural dwellers, in particular, had witnessed the chaos of the Great Leap and had seen their parents and children die from starvation during the 1958–61 famine. They learned they had to take care of themselves. The urban elite had been ripped from the cities to a life of work and reeducation in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, and a whole generation had been deprived of schooling. In the Russian case, the last famine lay three decades in the past. After the war, few people were executed for political crimes (political dissent became instead a mental disorder); the Gulag had been gradually dismantled after Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech of 1956. All lived under the motto, “We pretend to work and you pretend to pay.”² Surveys show that Russians were basically content with the system, comfortable in the bosom of their state enterprise or state farm.³ China had a reform constituency; Russia did not. Gorbachev had few reform-minded aides. He listened to the bad advice of his economists. He was opposed by an entrenched bureaucracy but supported by enterprise managers eager to cash in on ill-conceived reform.

Read more at Hoover Institution

China’s Grassroots Movement Toward Greater Freedom

Article at a glance
Over the last few decades, unorganized and leaderless grassroots • movements in China have led to the bottom-up expansion of civil rights.
A grassroots social revolution is taking place in China through • the rise of entrepreneurship, migration of millions from the countryside to cities, and an explosion of information available to ordinary people.
This grassroots social revolution is moving China towards a more • liberal society, regardless of whether the government remains in its current illiberal mode.

Introduction
In 1987, Deng Xiaoping admitted that the great success of township and village enterprises (TVEs), which first injected market principles into the state-run economy, took him and his Communist Party colleagues by surprise. He said: “The diversity of production, commodity economy, and all sorts of small enterprises boomed in the countryside, as if a strange army had appeared suddenly from nowhere. This is not the achievement of our central government.”1 This “strange army” was composed of millions of farmers whose ingenuity and desire to pursue their own ends freely made their individual entrepreneurial efforts add up to an unprecedented economic advancement of the country as a whole.2
The success of this unorganized, leaderless grassroots movement emphasized fatal flaws of the government’s earlier top-down initiatives, such as the Great Leap Forward. The freedom-seeking spirit of the ordinary Chinese has been driving the country’s economy toward greater openness and reliance on the market over the last three decades.
This spirit remains healthy today, and it has affected many elements of daily life. Whether resisting the old restrictions on freedom of movement or seizing individual liberties gradually conceded by the government, grassroots movements have fundamentally altered key elements of China’s one-party regime and its society at large.
The Chinese Government reacts rather than leads in this transformative process. Whenever the regime is slow to adjust, public dissatisfaction is no longer restricted to low whispers in the back rooms of houses; it takes place on the streets, in online chat rooms, and in courts. A growing number of Chinese constitutional scholars and intellectuals advance the cause of civil rights and continued liberalization by giving various grassroots movements an increasingly louder voice.
The question now is how far this grassroots liberalization can go and what it means for the long-term future of China’s current political and economic system.

Key Elements of China’s Bottom-up Transformation

China’s ongoing bottom-up transformation is about people seeking liberty on a daily basis. In the economic sphere, the result of this pursuit has been phenomenal growth despite single-party rule; but much talk on China’s economic rise as a new state-led development model does not fit reality. The story is simple: when people have liberty, limited as it may be, development occurs. Milton Friedman was right to point out the failure of central planning around the world to achieve development objectives, which is attributable, at least in part, to central planning’s political implications that trample individual freedom and rights.3 Another view useful in explaining China’s economic success is that of Friedrich von Hayek and his theory of spontaneous order. When ordinary people, through a principle of self-organization, share and synchronize personal knowledge, they create local markets and reduce formal power structures of the communist state.
The Chinese grassroots transformation is also evident in the socio-political sphere. Although far from altering the entrenched structures of the state, various movements managed to expose many contradictions inherent in the authoritarian system, which claims to represent “the people.” One avenue for exposing these contradictions is highlighting discrepancies between the letter of the Chinese Constitution and the practice of the state’s conduct. This strategy has become common among grassroots reformers. In May 2003, for instance, three young Chinese legal scholars wrote a petition asking the government “to enforce personal rights that are guaranteed in the Constitution.”4 Chinese people pursuing their rights create a new social milieu – the beginning of grassroots constitutionalism. Individuals bravely fighting for their rights are, in effect, writing a new Chinese Constitution.
Having awareness of constitutional civil rights and economic freedoms and making the government respect both will not be quick or easy; still the Chinese people have made substantial inroads. The tipping point came when millions violated the collectivization and registration laws in search of a better life. More and more Chinese are taking the next step in asserting their rights. They want greater freedom of information and more personal choices and they take government officials to court seeking justice and equal treatment.

Read more at Center for International Private Enterprise

The Chinese-American SACO Medal

Enlargement of the SACO Medal’s center. The elaborate
Chinese ideogram to the wearer’s right reads “America,” the
smaller to the left reads “China,” followed by SACO.
Ron Leverenz Doughboy Military Springfield, MO

On 4 May 1942, four-striper U.S. Navy Captain Milton Edward Miles arrived in Chungking as Naval Observer Chungking, to establish wartime working relations with Generalissimo Chang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist Chinese. Miles was an old “China Hand",  having spent a good bit of time in the Far East, and was just the man to liaison with the Chinese.

The U.S. Navy needed a source of weather information in China as the weather appearing over western China eventually moved out over Japan and the Pacific. Such information was especially important in planning aviation operations. In May 1942, the first members of what became Naval Group China, arrived in Chungking to set up the first naval communications system and was followed by a group of meteorological experts to begin weather forecasting. Knowing that Chinese support was vital, Captain Miles, now Chief of United States Strategic Services in the Far East, conferred with Lt. General Tai Li, Chief of the Chinese Bureau of Investigation and Statistics of the National Military Council, an implacable foe of the Japanese and of any enemies of the Generalissimo to whom he was deeply devoted. On 15 April 1943, the Sino-American Cooperative Organization Agreement, between the United States and China was signed and SACO became operational, commanded by Lt.General Tai Li as director and with Captain Miles as Deputy Director. Ultimately about 2,800 U.S.Navy and Marine Corps personnel, of whom all had volunteered for secret, hazardous duty, served in SACO, with an amazing record of only one combat death and four accidental deaths.

With the aid of General Tai Li’s Chinese, SACO set up weather observation stations as far west as the Gobi Desert and even in Japanese occupied areas of China, which supplied continuous weather forecast information as well as weather maps to the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet and the 14th Air Force. In addition to this vital service, SACO’s units were tasked with training Chinese guerilla units in weapons training, demolitions, sabotage, chemical warfare, night operations, intelligence gathering, street fighting, patrolling and scouting and the use of naval and land mines. About 50,000 guerillas were trained who soon made themselves known. to the Japanese. Accompanied by their SACO advisors, they destroyed Japanese locomotives and rolling stock, blew up Japanese troop trains, cut rail lines, attacked Japanese held towns and villages and burned Japanese warehouses and supply dumps. By the end of the war, they had killed 23,000 Japanese, destroyed 209 bridges, 141 ships, 84 locomotives and rescued 76 downed American airmen. SACO’s Yangtze River Unit attacked river and rail traffic and ultimately severed Japanese supply lines in central China. The Japanese held the towns but the guerillas dominated the countryside.

SACO soon fell out with the OSS, which was expanding its activities in the Orient as the war in Europe wound down. The OSS felt that rightly they should be doing what SACO was doing and continued to make difficulties for SACO. Also, General Stilwell resented having naval personnel in what he considered his personal army area and was particularly irked as SACO was an independent organization and not under his control. He frequently held up supplies destined for SACO, once for as long as six months. Despite all this, SACO persevered.

SACO set up coast-watching stations along the entire China coast behind Japanese lines and even had two coast watchers on Formosa. They sent information on Japanese maritime movements (naval and merchant ships) to General Claire L. Chennault’s 14th Air Force whose bombers eventually forced the coastwise traffic further out to sea where they became the victims of waiting submarines. The Kunming branch of coast watchers crowning achievement was the discovery of an undetected Japanese carrier task force heading toward the Philippines. Using this critical information Admiral Halsey’s 3rd Fleet carriers surprised the Japanese and destroyed the Japanese vessels in the Battle of Leyte Gulf (25-26 October 1944). The coast watchers soon cleared the Chinese coast of most Japanese coast-wise traffic, forcing the occupying Japanese to use the roads and railways which were subject to attack by SACO trained guerillas. The surrender of Japan did not end the fighting in China as several groups of Japanese refused to surrender and chose death rather than disgrace.

As a collector of World War II medals, I was delighted to obtain one of the scarcest and virtually unknown Chinese awards for World War II when I was in Taipei about 25 years ago. This is the Sino-American Cooperative Organization Medal, established by the Nationalist (Republic of China) Ministry of National Defense in 1974 and manufactured on Taiwan by Hisang Fah Industrial Works. Recipients had to serve an mainland China in the U.S.Naval Group China (SACO) in 1942 to 1945. Many of these medals were presented at the annual SACO Veterans convention in San Diego in 1974. This was another token of esteem from the grateful Chinese for American help against the invading Japanese. SACO personnel would also qualify for the Chinese “Medal in Commemoration of Victory in the Resistance Against Aggression “ (See the article in “Military Trader” of March 2006 “Chinese-American War Medal.”).

The large, heavy (34 gram weight) decoration is colorful and gaudy as Chinese awards tend to be. It is composed of four groups of enameled alternating rays of red, white, blue, white, red, all edged in gold and pointing north, south, east and west, each group separated by a shorter gold ray in the shape of a sword blade. The maximum height and width of the decoration is 58mm, formed by the blue rays which are the longest. In the center is a disc with a diameter of 27mm with a background of the Republic of China flag to the wearer’s right and the United States flag to his left, hung vertically and enameled in their proper colors. Superimposed across the flags are two hands, in gold, clasped in friendship and below the hands are two Chinese ideograms, the elaborate one to the wearer’s right, translates as “America” and the other as “China,” followed by western letters reading SACO, all in gold.

On the reverse, an inscription in Chinese translates “In recognition of the contributions made by those who fought against the aggressors for freedom during the period 1942-1945. Presented by their comrades in arms.”

The suspension ribbon is threaded through a large gold ring and is composed of 5mm wide vertical stripes of blue, white, red, a 2mm wide gold stripe, and then again 5mm wide stripes of red, white, blue.

Undoubtedly, this is one of the rarest awards for World War II and although 2,800 men qualified for the award, only 600 were presented to SACO veterans in San Diego. Like the aforementioned “Chinese-American Medal” the SACO medal was not authorized for wear on the American uniform. The original order, permitting the wearing of the “Chinese-American Medal” (Circular 166, 29 September 1945) was immediately, three days later, rescinded by Circular 169, Section III, from U.S.Forces China. The issue of wearing either medal, by 1974 was moot as it is unlikely that any of the recipients of either medal would still be serving in the U.S. Forces, 29 years after the war’s end.

General Tai Li died in a plane crash in China, on March 17, 1946, so did not live to see his beloved China taken over by the Communists who obliterated his memorial and grave.

His deputy director, Captain Miles, remained in the U.S. Navy and eventually became a Vice-Admiral. SACO was better known to its members and their Chinese allies as “The Rice Paddy Navy”.

More at Military Trader