Word: hua
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Back in China the philosopher Hu Shih (later Ambassador to the U.S.) had taken to writing in Pai-hua or spoken Chinese (as contrasted with written Chinese, called Wen-li). But even this could be read only by other scholars-the people at large were still illiterate...
Jimmy analyzed the letters he wrote for his coolies, found a vocabulary of about 1,000 Pai-hua characters sufficient to write all of them. Then he called a mass meeting. When he told the coolies they could do what coolies had never done, only 40 agreed to take a lesson. After four months they could write a letter, read news, and soon the canteen was a nightly humbuzz of coolies studying Basic Chinese aloud. Jimmy went to Paris to show other Chinese camp agents what he had learned about teaching coolies...
China now had a linguistic instrument which could help rebuild the nation. But the literate coolie veterans of the war had next to nothing to read. So Jimmy set out to create a plain people's literature in Pai-hua. The peasants were generally skeptical, but eventually Jimmy's revolution spread to thousands of centers. In addition to reading and writing, many of these centers teach public health, improved economic ways, civics. They are an integral part of the new national educational system. Jimmy became an adviser to Chiang Kaishek, many a night of whose sleep he ruined...
Says the pamphlet: "The Tsing Hua University in Peiping ... is used by the Japanese mainly as a hospital for their wounded soldiers. The auditorium ... is being used as a meeting place for the troops. . . . The eastern half of the biological laboratory is a stable, while the classroom attached to it is a bar. . . . The new southern residential quarters have become Japanese brothels...
...along. It boasted at first of 52,000 Japanese casualties. Later the military spokesman pared this to 30,000 casualties. At the front, the tough men of battle told correspondents they had nicked the enemy for only 21,000. Among themselves, Chinese had learned to discount their press ta hua-big talk. They did not realize that Americans, unused to Chinese newspaper ways, were accepting Chungking statements at face value, that editorialists were using every sliver of American bright news from the dark Orient as an editorial springboard...