"The Communists Have Come"

Shanghai, which had known little quiet in its turbulent history, fell to the Communists one sunny morning last week-- quietly.

Three days earlier, Shanghai's Nationalist defenders had announced: "We will fight to the last drop of blood." Most Shanghailanders fervently hoped that this promise would not be kept. They regarded the Nationalist cause as hopeless, and feared that a prolonged defense would bring nothing but pillage and destruction to the world's fourth* largest city (pop. 6,000,000).

Run, Fight, Push. While a Nationalist spokesman was shouting words of defiance, something else was happening around Shanghai's defense perimeter. From his vantage point on the twelfth floor of the massive Picardie Apartments in Shanghai's old French concession, an American looked south over Lunghua airport. Later he described what he saw: "There were sharp bursts of machine-gun fire from the south. Then, within minutes, every road into the city was clogged with retreating Nationalist soldiers and civilians. Soldiers who were walking yanked civilians from their bicycles and pedicabs. The soldiers ran and fought and pushed."

By midmorning of the following day the Nationalists were in full retreat, plunging northward through Shanghai's jammed and clamorous heart. Some outfits marched through almost in parade formation; others, caked with mud from the battlefields, streaked through the city in terror and confusion, taking with them everything they could lift, carry or roll.

Top Nationalist officials made an eleventh-hour getaway from Kiangwan airfield. One of them was Mayor Chen Liang, who had just announced the beginning of "Health Week" in Shanghai. Quipped the Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury the next day, before the Communists took it over: "The mayor certainly was sincere about it. He found out what seemed best for his health and promptly did it." By dusk, the western and southern outskirts of the city were bare of troops.

What Day Is It? At midnight, Communist infantrymen commanded by General Chen Yi began filtering into Shanghai through the French concession in the southwest. The Reds moved as quietly as they could. In small groups they advanced slowly down the sidewalks of Avenue Joffre and Great Western Road, sidling close to buildings for protection against occasional fire from isolated Nationalist snipers. By 9 a.m. they had reached the city's skyscraper-lined Bund.

The Reds' light, mustard-colored uniforms were generally clean, and the men were well armed with Bren guns, Tommy guns, modern rifles (some of Japanese make, some U.S.). They carried pouches of hand grenades at their belts, bandoleers of cartridges across their shoulders. Many were exhausted. At every halt, soldiers slumped in doorways and on sidewalks. One tall native of Shantung looked up wearily: "What day is it today? We've been walking and fighting for eight days."

Throngs of curious Chinese crowded about the Communist soldiers. "Have the Communists really come?" asked one onlooker repeatedly. Finally a young Red officer replied: "Palu tao-le [The Communists have come]." Most of the Communist soldiers were peasant boys, and clearly more amazed at Shanghai than Shanghai was at them. They gawked at the skyscrapers and movie palaces, moved uncertainly through the teeming streets.

The Communist troops behaved with impressive discipline. Said one cook-boy in amazement: "The Communist soldiers even tell us not to stand on the street to look. They say too dangerous. Maybe somebody get hurt." Other Chinese agreed. "These soldiers are good," said one. "They stay out in the road, even when people ask them to come inside and sleep. When the Japs came they wanted to go in houses, hotels, baths, cinemas. The Communists want to stay in the road."

One Shanghailander asked a policeman in front of the Bank of China why the Reds did not sleep inside. The answer: "Soldiers say money inside. Maybe they make trouble if they go inside. They sleep on sidewalk." Newspapers suggested that the people give boiled water to the troops. When the soldiers insisted on paying for the water, the news traveled fast.

Even the Bank Clerks. Within an hour after the Communists reached the Bund, Shanghai turned out to celebrate the change in rule. Near the American Club, a hastily thrown-up banner proclaimed: "Welcome to the People's Liberation Army." Employees of the Central Bank of China slapped posters on the stonewalled building: "Confiscate the properties of the privileged families and bureaucratic capitalists!" A huge old portrait of Communist Boss Mao Tse-tung was hoisted over the Great World Amusement Center. Red flags waved over shop doorways, and truckloads of university students and factory workers careened through the streets jubilantly waving pennants.

From loudspeakers in the downtown areas, Communist songs rasped out above the din of the city's traffic and the distant rattle of machine guns at Soochow Creek, where the Nationalists were still putting up a rearguard action while the remnants of their armies headed toward twelve big ships and scores of smaller craft at Woosung, the last escape port.

The day after the city's fall, streetcars and buses were running again in the southern sections of the city, and Shanghai's white-helmeted policemen, their new allegiance indicated by red armbands, were back at their pylons directing traffic. On street corners, silver-dollar hawkers clinked their wares once more, and sidewalk vegetable stands, bare for almost a week, filled up again quickly with produce from the countryside.

Who's Kissing Her Now? Gradually, Shanghai's shopkeepers began to open their stores. The Communists, eager to get business started again, asked the American-owned Shanghai Power Co. to keep the doors of its collection office open even though one corner of the building was still in the line of fire of a few Nationalist snipers still fighting from the buildings along the Bund and Soochow Creek. On the third day of Communist rule, 300 truckloads of political workers and takeover officials chugged into Shanghai. One group, responsible for industry, trade, finance, postal services and telecommunications, set up offices in the Pacific Hotel. The halls of the hotel quickly filled with brisk, businesslike young girl political workers dressed in the uniform of the Red army.

Along Nanking Road, Shanghai's main business street, Red soldiers herded captured Nationalists into filling stations. When an angry crowd of civilians turned on a frightened Nationalist soldier, Red troops dispersed them. At one busy corner, a Communist noncom stood guard over a lone Nationalist soldier who squatted self-consciously in a doorway. "What about him?" asked a civilian. "He is very happy now," replied the noncom. The soldier, puffing a cigarette, grinned sheepishly. And under the marquee of the Cathay Theater, a lone Communist private, obviously ill at ease in the big city's hurlyburly, served a nervous trick as sentry. Behind him, a gaudily got-up billboard advertised the Cathay's latest feature attraction: I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now.

Thus did communism take over Shanghai, half again as big as great Moscow itself, and the most modern city in China. The imperialists had built Shanghai, and when imperialism's day was done, the Chinese had inherited the city only to find it a legacy they could not completely control. The greatest commercial center in Asia was certainly not proCommunist; but it was anti-Nationalist because the Nationalists had not the discipline to master Shanghai's half-Eastern, half-Western soul. The city had the energies of two worlds, and the controls of neither. Now world communism, the new imperialism, would have a try.

When a parade of singing university students swung by in the rhythmic, conga-like step of the peasant yangko dance, a grey-gowned merchant said: "It is good it came so peacefully, but now we must see, we must wait and see."

* After London (8,202,818), New York (8,067,000) and Tokyo (7,094,600).

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