Escorted Adventure

Across the beautiful barren badlands of northwestern China, past sinkholes, chasms and occasional green valleys, jounced six foreign correspondents, ten Chinese journalists and five alert representatives of Chungking's Ministry of Information.

When the decrepit old highway petered out, the party left its de luxe Dodge busses, mounted little horses and rode to a promontory above the mighty Yellow River, sunk in its age-old canyon. They crossed the swift waters on the rope planks of a swaying, weathered suspension bridge, climbed the winding trail beyond to Kenanpo in Shansi, perched like a feudal castle on a cave-pocked cliff.

Model Town. In Kenanpo the news men met aged, wily Yen Hsi-shan, an old-style but relatively progressive warlord. Once he was an enemy of Chiang Kaishek, is now his honored representative. The slippered old man, in a private's uniform, told them of his program to out smart the Communists by improving administration, lifting the lot of the peasant. But Yen's main job was to watch the Japanese, 20 miles to the east. The news men watched coolies singsong a dismantled truck up the cliff, for use on the highway leading to the static front. They inspected cave dwellings of two or more well-swept rooms with an earthen shelf for the family bed, an earthen fireplace and an earth-rirnmed pen for the goat. They saw signs of ample food, good discipline, an official distaste for Communists. Every citizen of Kenanpo, including General Yen, must cultivate a little garden. No one wears skirts in Kenanpo; men, women & children dress in identical floppy blue trousers and jackets. The climate is like Arizona; hot and dry by day and cool at night. The caves are 10DEG cooler inside.

Fortress Town. The visit to Kenanpo was a side trip on the way to Yenan, Communist China's capital in the province of Shensi, barred to correspondents since 1939. First stop in Shensi was at Sian, since 1937 the Kuomintang's key military and political bastion against the Communist threat. There the correspondents were handsomely wined & dined. Dense crowds lined the streets, breaking into staccato cheers at a given signal. Waiters had "V" for Victory hastily stitched on their caps. A plane had brought them to the capital of Shensi; busses and horses would take them over the rest of their three-month inspection tour. The Government had promised no political censorship, provided the reports carried Chungking's side of the story.

General Lo Tse-kai, chief of staff, surprised the newsmen by stating flatly that the famous Communist Eighth Route Ar my had never fought the Japanese. Asked why the Japanese continually reported clashes with the Communists, he snapped: "If you believe the Japs, why is America fighting Japan?" Lo Tse-kai denied that his troops had ever received Lend-Lease aid, though as he spoke a flight of U.S.-built planes roared overhead, enroute to the Honan front.

Penitents' Town. The correspondents visited Sian's "labor camp," a rehabilitation center for political malcontents. Officially, instruction is for those who seek it and lasts two years, one political, one vocational. But some inmates said that they had been there four years. A group of trusties, invited to tea, told the correspondents that they had entered freely, after leaving the Communist area, to have their thoughts straightened out. These people were self-possessed and smiling. Others, when buttonholed on the drill ground, blanched and trembled, stammeringly admitted that some of their fellows were still Communist. People in Sian laughed at the suggestion that attendance was voluntary.

After three days in regulated, circumspect fortress Sian, one correspondent reported nostalgia for the relatively liberal, easygoing ways of Chungking. He might have added that the Chungking Government had let him and his fellows cable a liberal dose of the truth about China.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.