Gung Ho Newsletter

September 2013 No. 100

本 · ICCIC members visit Cooperatives in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia……1 期 · Sichuan Ya'an Earthquake Donation …………………………………2 要 · Visit to the Kanglejia Community Service Development Center …2 · Third Executive Meeting of the ICCIC in 2013 held in ……2 目 · SACU / SCA Delegation Meet ICCIC Members and Visit the BBU …3

· ICA Global Conference and General Assembly Video ………………5

· Looking Into the Chinese Mirror …………………………………5

ICCIC Members Visit the Cooperatives in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia

The ICCIC Chair, Michael Crook and member Fan Minjian visited rice growing cooperatives in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia on August 6-8, 2013.

Left 2:Fan Minjian，Right 3: Michael Crook Right 1：Zhang Yunguang

Sichuan Ya'an Earthquake Donation

At 08:02, on 20 April 2013, an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale struck the county of Lushan in Ya‟an Municipality, Sichuan Province. The International Committee for the Promotion of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives - ICCIC - called upon its members and friends to demonstrate their Gung Ho spirit by making generous donation to the victims to help them through these hard times, and rebuild their homes. Donations from several members totaling 44,787.11 CNY has been delivered to the victims through Sichuan Charity Federation. Thank you very much for your donation. (Donation Name list on our website)

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Visit to the Shanghai Kanglejia Community Service Development Center

September 17th, ICCIC Executive Members Guo Lulai, Zhang Gaoling, Secretary General Yu Xiaohong, ICCIC Staff and Shanghai members visited the Shanghai Kanglejia Community Service Development Center, which operates over 30 activity centres for the elderly in Shanghai. The Mao Lijun Introduced the information president of Kanglejia, ICCIC member Mr. Mao Lijun showed the visitors around.

The Third Executive Meeting of the ICCIC in 2013 held in Shanghai

On September 18, 2013，the Third Executive Meeting of the ICCIC in 2013 was held in Shanghai, attended by Michael Crook, Dave Bromwich, Jin Guoming, (representing Song Zhendong, who was in hospital recovering from an operation), Yu Lin, Li The Third Executive Meeting of the ICCIC in 2013

Zhiming, Guo Lulai, Li Zhonghua, Tao Yong, Zhang Gaoling, Secretary-General Yu Xiaohong and Vice-

Secretary General Li Jinguo.

2 The Third Executive Meeting of the ICCIC in 2013

SACU / SCA Delegation Meet ICCIC members and Visit the BBU

On September 26, 2013, about 20 ICCIC members gathered in the Beijing Bailie University (BBU) to welcome the delegation from the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU) and Scotland China Association. This meeting was attended by about 100 people, including the ICCIC members, representatives from the SACU, the ICCIC Member, the BBU teachers and students and the SACU representatives from the Scotland-China Association (SCA), teachers and students from the BBU.

Chairman of the ICCIC Michael Crook and President of the BBU Yu Lin gave the opening address followed by speeches by Jenny Clegg, Vice-President of SACU, Janice Dickson, Chair of the SCA, Zoe Reed, Chair of the SACU, and two members from the SACU delegation. The ICCIC Advisors Isabel Crook, Lu Wanru and Tang Zongkun also attended.

The former International Secretary of CIC Peter Townsend made tremendous contributions to the Gung Ho movement during the anti-Japanese war. Peter's daughter Catherine also with the

SACU delegation. The ICCIC the ICCIC Advisor Isabel Crook and Catherine presented calligraphy to Catherine, in memory of her

3 father Peter Townsend: “Ambassador for Anglo-Chinese friendship, Bearer of the Gung Ho spirit!

(英中友好使者，传承工合精神)

the ICCIC Chair Michael Crook and the BBU President Yu Lin Gave the Opening Address

the ICCIC Advisor Lu Wanru talked with the SACU Delegation

Michael presented the calligraphy to Catherine

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ICA Global Conference and General Assembly Video

On 1st - 5th November, 2013, ICA Global Conference and General Assembly was held in South Africa, more information please click here: http://www.thenews.coop/video

Looking Into the Chinese Mirror

Peter Townsend1

My first contact with China came when I was eight or nine．We were living in Canterbury, in Kent in , and one evening there was a meeting at the Odd fellows Hall．The subject was the situation in China．The speaker, I have always thought, was Eugene Chen, Finance Minister in Sun Yat-Sen‟s administration (whether it was Mr. Chen I can‟t confirm). I was sitting in the front row of the audience．My father was chairman． My father had once been a Baptist, but had converted to Quakerism with my mother．He was also a socialist, a member of the local Labour Party, and a pacifist．In the First World War a mob had torn the hosting from under him while he was delivering an anti-war speech．But he had developed an interest in the Sino-Japanese conflict and at the time the London Times was covering that conflict and occasionally ran a small map of the part of China where the Long March was taking place．We used to study those maps at the breakfast table． My next contact was less direct．At my prep school I became captain of hockey and fell under the tutelage of a Mr. Hawker．He had been a member of the British national hockey eleven and was spending a year‟s leave from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company teaching at the school. He took an interest in me because of my love for hockey, but he also inspired in me an interest in the East and introduced me to poets such as Rumi. It was then that one Saturday afternoon - Saturday afternoons

1 Peter Townsend was International Secretary of the CIC from the late 1940s to 1952. After his return to England, he became a famous art critic. 5 were always devoted to sport - I gathered the hockey players together on the field and announced that we‟d form two teams, one Chinese, one Japanese, and play out the Sino-Japanese conflict．Chinese to the left．Japanese to the right.‟ No one moved to the left．All crowded to the right．Those years, of course, the British government supported and helped to arm the Japanese．The Chinese were regarded as second-rate and fruit for missionaries and traders．I was chagrined and angry and under my orders the players split into two and played according to my designation, but it was a useful lesson. The third time was when in November 1937 my brother Will, an artist, took me to an exhibition in London of Chinese wartime woodcuts．By then I was seventeen. Some years later I came to know Mme．Sun Yat-sen in Chungking and at her house I met Chou En-lai．His English was excellent and we got on well．He thought I might make a good bridge partner. Unfortunately I don‟t play bridge, so instead he encouraged me to take an interest in contemporary woodcuts and presented me with my first one, by a Szechuan artist．That started me collecting．My collection of about 250 woodcut items is now in the Australian National Gallery． Those years were a time of great political conflict in which almost all of us became involved at one extreme or another. The British government did not confront German or Italian fascism effectively or willingly．Nor did it oppose Franco in Spain, the Japanese in China, or the Italians in Ethiopia．My family, for its part, veered leftward．My brother Will, the painter, worked voluntarily for an organization that supported the Spanish Republicans．That‟s how I came to study Spanish with a Spanish refugee．My aunt, a professional pianist, became involved in Jewish relief agencies．That‟s how I came to study the violin with a refugee from Vienna．Some of our leaders wanted us to compromise, to comply with the aims of Hitler and Mussolini．That pushed many of us further towards the left．My brother Robert, an architect, became a devout Communist. (He eventually left the Communist Party, upset by Stalin‟s trials, and after a period in the wilderness sought to satisfy his desire for the Absolute by joining the Catholic Church, in which he rose to deacon, as high as he could go without disposing of his wife)．I, too, formed a political discussion organization at my school, an elderly public school which had included among its pupils Christopher Marlowe, the Elizabethan playwright, Walter Pater, the 19th century aesthetician, and Somerset Maugham the 20th century novelist．We - or at least some of us - listened to parliamentary or other politicians, discussed the political scene, imagined that we were more important than we were. Then the war came. I was just back from a hitch-hiking trip to France and Belgium．At one

6 point, outside Perpignan, I had got a lift to Paris from a couple of men who had escaped from a Franco detention center and climbed over the Pyrenees, only to find their army call-up papers waiting for them. I was on vacation from Oxford where I had been studying history for a year and I didn‟t go back．Instead of returning there, under the influence of my parents (but not their prodding, for fortunately they thrust no religion down my gullet) I volunteered for the Friends Ambulance Unit, a Quaker-1ed pacifist group. On January 1, 1940, I began my training in driving, emergency „first-aid‟ practice and so on, in a tent on an estate owned by the Cadbury family, chocolate magnates and stalwarts of the Quaker establishment． Once that training was completed I served in hospitals in various cities and in military hospitals, including one that received many patients from the British retreat from Belgium and Northern France. I also served in London hospitals during the first stage of the German bombing of the city. But at the end of 1940 there came a request to the HQ of the Friends Ambulance Unit (F.A.U.) for an ambulance unit for China. I volunteered and was accepted. For three months, together with three or four others of the team, I studied Chinese with E.R. Hughes, a former missionary, then a professor at Oxford. For a further three months several of us studied Chinese at the School of Oriental Languages, part of London University, in London. I didn‟t attend too many of the school classes because the conductor Malcolm Sargent had given me a card so that I could attend the London Philharmonic Orchestra at rehearsal, but one of my teachers was Xiao Qian, the Chinese writer and a Ta Kung Pao newspaper correspondent. He and I became close friends. During the Cultural Revolution he was locked up for a time. He also spent almost six years translating, with his wife, Joyce‟s Ulysses into Chinese. The first edition of 60, 000 sold out within six months. When our training was complete we shipped out, sailing in a convoy around South Africa to Singapore - and arriving there on the evening of the day when Japanese planes first bombed the city. From there we took a coastal steamer to Rangoon. There too we arrived on the afternoon of the first air raid. My initial experience of driving a 6X Studebaker truck alone was to go down to the burning docks, hitch up another 6X, and tow it to safety. From Rangoon we drove up the Burma Road to Kunming in Southwest China, and then on to Kweiyang where the F. A. U. unit was based. After a short time serving in a local hospital - long enough to realize that I and a 6X were unlikely to get along very well - there came a request from the Northwest Headquarters of the Chinese Industrial Co-operatives (C.I.C.) in Baochi, Shensi province, for someone to replace their English-secretary, a man called George Hogg, who had left to head a co-operative school to the

7 south of Baochi. I leapt at the opportunity．We drove for three or four days due north. One of our drivers was Al Ravenholt, an American journalist on vacation. Another was a Philippine-Chinese who was framed by the Kuomintang police in Sian until he bought himself out of detention. When we arrived in Baochi I was assigned an 8 feet by 12 feet room in the compound of the director of the Northwestern co-operatives, where I lived until 1943, eating at the director‟s table, listening to their Chinese and English (for both the director and his wife had been at universities in England) and learning among other things to eat poached eggs with chopsticks． My bed was three planks and two trestles．Each night a three-legged dog, Tufei (Bandit), leaped onto my bed to sleep Poor Tufei, victim of a road accident, eventually drowned in the compound W.C., a shallow pit crossed by two or three boards, one of which was set high enough to sit upon．And every so often I practiced the flute, which I had learned in London before leaving in order to have some instrument with me．Every so often, that is, until one evening I heard behind me a rustle which shouldn‟t be there．I turned around．Through small holes in the paper windows were six interested eyes, the eyes of children studying at the primary school next door． My job as English secretary was to provide reports to institutions and charities abroad - United China Relief and Indusco, the American Society for C.I.C. in New York, Lady Cripps‟ relief body in the U.K., organizations in Australia and , Overseas Chinese bodies and so on - about the work, education and health facilities of the Northwestern co-operatives, particularly those projects receiving funding from abroad. The co-operatives were small-scale, often rurally-based industrial units, each member of which took part in policy discussions and shared in any profits．They were small machine shops, wool and cotton spinning units, groups making blankets for the army, others making shoes, ceramics, paper, cigarettes, bricks, leather, furniture and so on．In addition, there was a savings bank and a medical center and in Paochi and elsewhere there were schools, not only for the children of co-op members. I visited those co-ops in and around Paochi and then extended my visits to Sian, Lanchow, Tienshui and other towns and villages．I wrote about them extensively, and my Chinese improved, until one night I found I was dreaming in Chinese． At the same time as I was learning about co-operatives I was also learning about poverty, illiteracy and political oppression．In Europe I had seen the poverty of the 1930s depression, but here the poverty was desperate and evident almost everywhere．Northwest China was then among the poorer parts of the country．To get to some of the co-operatives we had to walk through farmland, and sometimes we would see ploughs guided by humans and drawn by humans．We went ten or fifteen miles into the hills near Baochi where there were landlord-owned coal mines and

8 watched how children of ten or twelve strapped baskets around their middle and crawled down the mines‟ narrow tunnels and crawled, crawling on all fours, with their baskets full of coal. And one saw it on the streets and in the shabby huts of peasants. The principles of co-operation, „gung ho‟ (working together) and sharing out profits were anathema to the Knomintang movement and the landed gentry and the military that ensured its survival．And we saw that too, in the broken-up co-operatives and the organizers whose lives were endangered. So that little by little my pacifism was whittled away and I recalled in my lessons in history the violence of the English, French and American revolutions, the frequent inevitability of violence when sick and dying regimes are disposed of．In 1943 I took a C.I.C. truck to Chengtu and went on by postal truck to the then capital Chungking, where I went to the British Embassy to announce my change of heart, fully expecting to be assigned to some socially-excellent regiment such as the Gurkha Light Horse, only to be told that so many Americans were beginning to arrive in China that it was important for as many English people as possible to stay where they were．So I made arrangements to remain in Baochi but then received a telegram from an important New Zealand foreigner acting as C.I.C. Field Secretary, , instructing me to return not to Baochi but to Chengtu in West China, and assume the position of Executive Secretary to the C.I.C.‟ s International Committee, the organization that oversaw the use of foreign relief funds by the co-operatives．The then incumbent of the post, Dr．Lewis Smythe, a missionary, academic, was returning to the ． In my new post not only did I report developments in the co-operative movement; my colleagues and I received and passed on all the aid monies coming from other countries, we decided in consultation with members of the committee, a mix of foreigners and Chinese, and staff at the C．I C．headquarters where that money should go, and we met notable foreign visitors like Teddy White, the Time Life journalist, Dr．Joseph Needham the scientist, academics like Owen Lattimore, and Chinese notabilities like Fei Xiao-tong the sociologist． In 1945 the Japanese collapsed．I danced in the streets of Chengtu with my colleagues．Shortly afterwards I flew down to Shanghai where the C.I.C. H.Q. was already established, set up an office, shared a flat with an old co-operative friend, J．M．Tan and settled in. Then, together with the whole country, I awaited the end of the country‟s division between Kuomintang and and its supportive Peoples‟ Liberation Army． Quite early on it appeared probable that the Kuomintang would go down and the CCP triumph. But if so, what policy could we expects? There were the co-operatives, and a technical school in the Northwest now headed by New Zealander Rewi Alley, who had taken over when George Hogg died

9 of tetanus．Could our International Committee still coordinate funding for special projects? Would a new government wholly fund the co-operative central administration, the regional headquarters, the school? Would funds from abroad still be acceptable? I went to see Mme Soong Ching-ling. As herself dealing with funds from abroad and as the widow of Sun Yat-sen, the powerful political figure, she was sure to be a force in any administration that derived from the CP and its associates. „You should keep the co-operatives going, as best you can. And the school in the northwest.‟ „But, ‟ she added, „you should talk to Chou En-lai.‟ She made arrangements for me. General Chou, the communist- led People‟s Liberation Army negotiator, was in Nanking, one of a small group trying, unsuccessfully, to resolve the civil conflict peacefully. He was equally adamant．„Both, ‟ he said．„But you should see Mao Tse-tung.‟ Mao was in Yenan, a small country-side town in Shensi province, North China．I insisted that Victor Hicks, a trade unionist and technician from Indusco in New York, sent out by Indusco to estimate our needs under a new regime, go with me．Chou agreed immediately and put me in touch with General Huang Hua of the P.L.A., who was in Beijing with the civil war negotiating group. We traveled up to Beijing in March 1946, in order to fly to where Mao was stationed with the Border Region Government. From Beijing an American military plane would take us to Yenan, for a small American group was in Beijing and Yenan watching events. We were driven out to the airfield one morning. The plane was at the end of the runway ready to take off. The jeep drove out；for safety reasons we were not on the travelers list under our own names. The door opened. Out came the ladder. And we were inside with about twenty people, all men, all dressed in cotton khaki uniform and all clutching paper bags as if they were about to experience their first night. I will not here describe Yenan, its environment, its character. I tried to do something of that kind in the book I wrote, China Phoenix, after returning to England. Suffice to say that it surprised me by its absence of dirt or squalor. There were no beggars. Had they all been driven out for the time being, as the Kuomintang had driven its beggars out of Baochi when, for instance, a prominent diplomat was visiting? No, there were no beggars in Yenan to drive out. And the people, they looked reasonably dressed．Did clothes come in through some charity? No, there was no charity operating in the region. And the peasants in the fields, they did not look very down trodden, nor when one saw them in their cottages. Were the landlords carefully checked? There were no landlords． So we looked round, visited the health clinic, inspected the co-operatives, discussed with people in important and not so important positions and discovered many surprising things. Such as,

10 for example, that there did not appear to be any illiteracy. We also attended the weekend festivities. The first was a muted meeting to celebrate the life of an old friend of Yenan, a trade unionist who had died in a plane crash. Mao Tse-tung had been invited but was not expected to attend．He was, people said, too much affected by such loss．The second was a dance party. A dance party? In a rural Part of China? You mean, peasant men and women and ordinary officials dancing together ballroom-style? I had never heard of such a thing. Then we were called to an interview with Mao one evening, in his cave dwelling next to Date Garden where Chu Teh, the Army Commander-in-Chief, lived. (Chu had, by the way, sent me a co-operative-woven woolen Mao suit, the trousers - which I still have - too long, and the peaked cap with a silk red Communist Party star lining, a symbol which I threw away when the Kuomintang army was trying to give the appearance of defending Shanghai)． We were taken up to Mao‟s cave by truck． Mao was friendly and open．He had obviously been well-briefed on the condition of the C.I.C. in Kuomintang China．He too was adamant．„Keep as many of the co-operatives alive at possible．The school too．It is important that as many as possible remain at work．And when this is all over I hope Some funds from abroad will continue to come in!‟ Then he interrogated me as to the state of the British trade union movement．I failed miserably．My knowledge was too shallow, but he didn‟t object． When we returned to Beijing the civil war was spreading．Its end result was scarcely open to discussion．Penned in the cities, the Kuomintang armies were losing the countryside．Much of the equipment the United States had sent to keep the Kuomintang alive was falling into the hands of the Communist-led armies．There was little we could do except wait for the final outcome, for the travel routes were in disarray and we were increasingly confined to Shanghai．Moreover, our intake of funds from abroad was quietly diminishing. In 1949 Nanking fell．The P.L.A. crossed the Yangtse River．The British naval ship „Amethyst‟, which had been taking supplies up to the British Embassy, escaped by the skin of its teeth - a Chinese ship steamed in between it and the Chinese batteries at the mouth of the Yangtse．The armies closed in around Shanghai．Soon the signs of abandonment were there．People leaving, by plane or ship．The director of the C.I.C., Chang Fu-liang, American-educated and appointed by the Government, fled to Taiwan with his family．Down on the docks one could see prospective passengers boarding, with a dozen hats piled on their heads The guns encroached They were a constant noise．But one night everything went silent. Next morning the P.L.A. was guarding the

11 streets and people were out there cheering． From that point onward the plan was fairly clear．The C.I.C. headquarters relocated to Beijing. In the autumn of 1949 I too, as the representative of the International Committee, was called up to Beijing. My wife Rose, an American, followed. She got a job on the magazine People’s China. First I lived in a room off the HQ‟s office. Later we shared a small house with a Chinese couple. We also shared a Chinese cook and a man who came every month with budding or in-flower plants in baskets hanging from the end of his shoulder- carried bamboo pole to replace those in the courtyard flower beds which had died．The Korean war started The American government stopped the sending of money to China, but monies continued to come from Britain and New Zealand．The school in the Northwest, where Rewi Alley had been headmaster and which had been dependent on remittances from abroad, was placed under the oil administration of Yumen, further up the northbound road. And a new director of the C.I.C. was appointed by the People‟s Government - Meng Yung-chien, who had once been director of a C.I.C. Regional HQ in the south．He ultimately, became Co-operative Commissioner in the new government． One morning Meng phoned and said he would like to visit our compound. We prepared tea．He arrived and we sat around a table．After preliminary talk he said：„I‟ ve something to bring up with you, Can you let us have…‟ I don‟t remember the sum；it was 1arge but not impossible．„After this we won‟t ask you for any further money.‟ „And Rewi Alley, what will happen to him?‟ „He will be found a new job.‟ Yes, we had that sum, and more, in the bank．I gave him a check· And that was that. The industrial co-operatives were absorbed into the overall co-operative structure． The government took over the core of the central and regional Hqs. One by one the foreigners in the Northwest school left．Foreigners were also leaving the missionary-established universities like Yenching and Hua Hsi Ba. The foreign concessions were closing down Extra-territorial privileges were taken away. China was returning into the hands of the Chinese．Now it was our turn．We were offered jobs, but we refused then. Instead we stayed in Beijing for a further six months while I wrote the opening chapters of a book；then we shipped out via Hongkong, where we stayed with Bishop Hall for three nights．The only remarkable event there was bumping into an ex-missionary who confided that he was engaged in running guns into Tibet． Then a boat to London, about 50 lectures, and a very different life· Looking back, what does one say? It was educative, entrancing, disturbing. Watching the

12 decline of the old and the emergence of the new was to experience the making of history. The new China has given the country a great sense of self-respect. It has made great mistakes. But in recalling those mistakes one has also to take into account the paranoia caused by the counter-actions of China‟s opponents. Compare its effects to the likely effects of, say, the tearing away of Taiwan from the mainland, which in 1945 the Americans and British had agreed to return to the mainland after its decades of occupation by the Japanese, and now has been armed in opposition to the mainland. It has also fed its people, educated them better, improved their health and well-being．It has made China a country immensely important in the world. And for myself? I grew up there．I came to love it. Its people．Its landscape．Its food．I also came to tolerate many things and from a friend, a director of the C.I.C. HQ, Sun Bang-tso (or Johnson Sun：he had been educated in Manchester), I had a very good lesson in tolerance and the dangers of Absolutism．“When I was young, ” he said to me one day, “very young, my grandmother used to take me out on Chinese New Year‟s Day. She would pick me up and we would drive round Shanghai in one of those horse-drawn hansom cabs. First she would use some toilet paper to wipe my lips. That wiped away any dirty or disrespectful words I had uttered in the old year．Then we would drive to a Confucian shrine．We would go in and perform whatever the ritual was．Then we would go to a Buddhist temple and go through the proper rites．And then to a Christian church, a Hindu temple, a Taoist temple, a Muslim mosque, a Roman Catholic chapel．At each one the proper rite．„You see, ‟ she would say, „we don‟t know which one is the real one, which one will triumph.‟ Then we would go home for tea and cakes!‟

February, 2005

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