China and the West

Hemingway, Ernest. The Chinese can do what they want to do. In : Examiner ; 8 July (1941).
Manila : The ex-U.S. Ambassador to China (Mr. Wilson T. Johnson)—he will soon take up duty as U.S. Ambassador to Australia—lived in China so long that he talks like an elder Chinese statesman.
He never takes a view shorter than three thousand years. Before he left China for America I met him in Chungking. As we stood looking out from the new spring green of the U.S. Embassy terrace, across the fast-running, yellow Yangtse River to the rising bulk of the terraced, grey, bomb-battered, fire-gutted, grim stone island that is China's wartime capital, he said to me: "China can do anything that China wants to do." At the time this remark irritated me profoundly. I was thinking in immediate terms; how much money it would cost to tie up how many Japanese army divisions in China; what were the offensive possibilities for the Chinese army; could friction between the Communists and the Kuomintang—the Chinese Nationalist Party—be reduced so that they could find again a common basis for fighting against Japan; how many 'planes were needed before China could take the offensive, and who would fly them; how many pieces of artillery were absolutely necessary, and how were they to be got into China; and how many gunnery officers were fit to handle them when and if they were got in; and about several other things. When Mr. Johnson brought that re-mark up out of the depth of his learning I was moderately appalled. It did not seem to help much on the immediate solution of many grave problems. WHAT HE MEANT Two days later I flew up to Chengtu, in north Szechuan Province, where the caravans come down from Tibet, and you walk past yellow and red Lamas in the dust-deep streets of the old high-walled city. Up there in the North I found out what Mr. Johnson meant. It started with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek talking about Flying Fortresses. With some of those big four-motor Boeing 'planes, the Chinese pilots could fly over Japan at an altitude where neither Japanese anti-aircraft guns nor pursuit 'planes could bother them, and bring to Japan the horror that she has spread through China in the past four years. There were no Chinese pilots who were qualified to be checked out on Flying Fortresses, but none of those present brought that up; it was a thing which, presumably, could be arranged later. Someone did point out, though, that there was not a single airfield in China which could handle a Boeing B.17. At this point in the conversation the Generalissimo made a note. "What do they weigh?" he asked. "Around twenty-two tons," someone told him with more or less accuracy. "Not over that?" asked the Generalissimo. "No. But I will check." The next day the construction of an airfield began. Engineer Chen Loh-Kwan, 38 years old, graduate of the University of Illinois, chief of the Engineering Department of the Chinese Aeronautical Commission, was ordered to complete an airfield ready to receive Flying Fortresses on March 13, 1941. There was an "or else" added to the order. He had from January 8 to March 30, 1941, to build an airfield with a runway a mile and an eighth long by a little over one hundred and fifty yards wide, with a stone- filled and topdressed macadam run-way. He built his runway with a yard deep layer of stone, then a layer of watered earth, then another layer of stone. 60,000 WORKERS This stone was all hauled in baskets from the bed of a river which flowed along from half a mile to a mile away. Engineer Chen Loh-Kwan built 150 three and a half to 10-ton concrete rollers to smooth off this job. They were all pulled by manpower. One of the finest things I ever saw was that manpower pulling. Sixty thousand workers at one time were hauling the 220,000 cubic metres of gravel from eight miles along the river. Thirty-five thousand and more workers were crushing stone with hand hammers. There were five thousand wheelbarrows in use at a time, and two hundred thousand baskets slung on carrying sticks. Each carrying slick was bent to breaking point under a double load as the men worked 12 hour shifts. The Governor of Szechuan Province provided Engineer Chen Loh-Kwan with 100,000 workers. They came in hands of eight hundred from the ten different counties of the province. Engineer Chen Loh-Kwan was a very practical man, used to building airfields without tools and with no false illusions. "You see," he said to me when I visited the airfield, "there are certain things that we Chinese can do ourselves." It was close to the end of the dead-line, and the field would be ready on the date that had been set.