Word: changsha
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Thirty-seven years ago, in the Hunan Provincial Library at Changsha, a 19-year-old farm lad for the first time in his narrow life looked at a map of the world. He studied it, as he later recalled, with great interest. Last week, the farm lad was redrawing that map with an iron pen dipped in blood. Mao Tse-tung was adding China to the domain of world Communism...
...Peking University had survived the long war only by moving, lock, stock & barrel, 800 miles to Changsha, then trekking another 1,000 miles over mountains to Kunming. Back home again, Peking is still on the razor's edge. Inflation has reduced professors' salaries to $30 (U.S.) a month. The typical student diet: wo ton (millet, cornmeal and water). Laboratories and libraries have never recovered from Japanese ravages; for one history class, Peking has only three textbooks. For the next ten years, Chancellor Hu says, China ought to concentrate all her scholars, dollars and energies on five...
Grenades in the Night. The Government general did not find the task of occupation easy. At night, in outlying hamlets, grenades would explode, usually in the homes of villagers friendly to Government troops. Government soldiers moved always in groups. A veteran corporal who had fought the Japs at Changsha said: "When we fought the Japs we knew our enemy. But now, how can we tell? Communists may be anybody...
...When sudden spring floods washed out two of the longest temporary bridges north of Changsha last April, Director Tu put on three shifts of laborers, working day & night. The engineers managed to sink heavy loads of log piles, through unprecedentedly high water. Somehow, without modern diving equipment, timber superstructure had to be fastened to piles as much as 30 feet under water. Again the coolies' bitter strength saved the day. Local rivermen dove in, swam down for 80 seconds, drove spikes with hand hammers, a blow or two at each dive, until all were securely in place...
...streets. But now overseas Chinese are again sending money from the Philippines and Southeast Asia to rehabilitate the coastal trade, and on the Chinese New Year nearly every Amoy citizen boasted the traditional (but in recent years unobtainable) new suit or dress. Inland, such cities as Hengyang and Changsha, once 98% destroyed, are 30% rebuilt. Pot-holed Canton streets are being repaired, and are expected to be shipshape in three months...