Read Online The Dragon's Village: An Autobiographical Novel of Revolutionary China by Yuan-Tsung Chen - Free Book Online

Party’s base at the start of the final civil war. Now it would be carried out in the areas taken over from Guomindang rule in the final offensive. Three hundred million peasants would be involved, the great bulk of the population in Central-South, South, Southwest, and Northwest China. About twenty-eight million landlords and their families would be affected.
    Like every other able-bodied cadre in the theater I volunteered to go. This time I was accepted.

    The day the decision to carry through the land reform was announced, my uncle greeted me with a gloomy face. “I told you so,” he said. “Things are heating up. We can’t delay any longer. No one knows what this war will lead to. We’ll leave the house to the servants and be off as soon as we can pack.”
    â€œUncle, what has the land reform got to do with us personally? We don’t own farmland.” I tried to prepare him a little before dropping my bombshell. “And … well, you see, I’ve just volunteered to go out and help with the land reform.” There.
    My uncle was stunned. Words failed him, until finally he stuttered, “My God! Madame Lu still owns land near Shanghai and collects rent from the farmers there! What will happen if you’re sent to the place where her estates are? What will happen to her and Bob? What will happen to our marriage plans?” His world was collapsing.
    Uncle prepared to turn the house over to an old, loyal servant and began to pack in earnest. I too began to pack: first the things for the rest of my stay in Shanghai, in the theater’s dormitory for single cadres; then, another trunk to send with my uncle to Hong Kong. We still held on to the plan that I would join them there later.
    When the war began in Korea, it had already been decided that Bob Lu should leave China rather than run the risk of being caught up in the fighting. The day after the decision on land reform was announced, Madame Lu sent word that they were leaving immediately for Hong Kong, and they were sure that we would understand. We would all meet there soon, the note ended. I never saw Madame Lu or Bob again. I wasn’t heartbroken and I didn’t grieve. It had just been one of those typical Shanghai family arrangements, I suppose. A matter of putting two people and their money together.

4   
Journey to the Northwest
    Lana Turner had disappeared. A huge painting, the size of a billboard, had been hoisted up to take her place over the marquee of the Cathay Cinema. Center left was a determined-looking worker in blue overalls carrying an oversized hammer. He clasped the hands of a smiling peasant holding a sickle. Behind the worker were smaller figures of white-collar workers, men and women, professionals and intellectuals, carrying red banners, a whole forest of them. Factory chimneys spouted smoke in the background. Behind the peasant were serried ranks of other peasants marching against a background of neatly ordered fields being ploughed with tractors. A morning sun rose red in the cloudless blue sky. Over all floated the words “Land to the Tillers.”
    All over Shanghai, billboards that had once extolled Camel cigarettes and other goods now sang the praises of worker-peasant unity and land reform. Every day the press carried articles and editorials instructing and exhorting the cadres selected to go to the villages. We volunteers were given a crash course in the theory of agrarian revolution. Each of us was presented with a folder of documents to study. Meetings, lectures, and study groups were organized for us. Wang Sha and other veteran cadres who had already taken part in the land reform in North and Northeast China tried to pass on as much of their experiences tous as possible, but it became even clearer to me that without firsthand experience of working and living with the peasants in their villages it would be hard for us tyros to understand exactly what we had to do or how