Red Flowers for Father

It was the time of Ching Ming, the Pure Brightness Festival. Throughout the land the Chinese people, obeying ancient precepts, dutifully swept and tidied the graves of their ancestors. At the foot of a pine-dotted mountain in remote Chungpu, Shensi province, such a grave was swept. This was the tradition-hallowed tomb of the greatest ancestor of all, Huang Ti (Yellow Emperor), legendary Father of the Chinese race.*

But last week it was a new broom, swung by ideologically irreverent hands, that cleared Huang Ti's hypothetical resting place. Communist General Peng Teh-huai's men, marching south from their Ichuan victory, had taken it. They turned the ceremony into a propaganda field day.

Their prayer started traditionally enough: "We come with fragrant flowers and sweet wine to pray. . . ." Then came the political snapper: "No matter how American imperialism exerts itself, the children of the Yellow Emperor will unite under the Chinese Communist Party and . . . thoroughly exterminate all of Chiang Kai-shek's gangsters." They wished Huang Ti's posterity "10,000 years, 1,000 autumns."

Some no miles away in Sian, Shensi's Governor Chu Shao-chou, unable to reach Huang Ti's tomb this year, led a Nationalist ceremony of "distant obeisance."

* If Huang Ti lived--and some Chinese scholars believe that he was just the personification of an era--it was from B.C. 2697 to 2595. Chinese credit him with the invention of armor and wheeled vehicles.

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