Word: regional
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Communist China now claims 80,000,000 people and 1,000,000 square miles of territory. For five years it has been a land of mystery to the outside world. Last May Chungking lifted its blockade, let foreign correspondents enter the Border Region, the Communist area in Shensi, Kansu and Ninghsia...
...Land. The Border Region, a wilderness of loess cut into wild shapes by streams, broken by valleys and woodland, is generally fertile, but there is little rainfall. The Communists are slowly changing the face of this churlish land. Where the soil is cultivable, they have planted crops. Villages have plenty of pigs and chickens. Generally the inhabitants look sturdy, well-fed, well-clothed. The typical village home is an arched loess cave, whitewashed and faced with wood...
...Everywhere on stone walls and cliffsides appears the four-syllable slogan coined by the government's able chief, Mao Tze-tung: "Move your own hands!" Meaning: "He who does not work shall not eat." A Border Region epithet is the term erh-lu-tze - loafer (literally, "she-donkey"). Communists say they once counted 70,000 loafers, that now there are only a few hundred. These diehards must wear a big white erh-lü-tze badge, are fair game for anyone's hoots and jeers. But this year an official thought up a subtler approach...
Considerable private trade goes on, especially risky, lucrative smuggling. Most legitimate marketing is handled by consumer-producer cooperatives. In parts of the Border Region, the old landlord-tenant system is preserved with modifications. Rent and interest have been cut an average 25%. Landlords may not evict tenants.Tenants must pay their rent on time except in cases of crop failure when both sides share the loss...
...Sometimes [these conductors] seem content to fabricate their figures in ice, hankering to muse in temperatures below zero, phrasing frozen notations with icicle-batons. From the arctics and antarctics which they explore, they bring a refrigeration that benumbs artistic sensibilities. Many an auditorium is converted into a 'thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice,' the loges and stalls becoming igloos of inadequate shelter during sequences of gelid motets, sleet-sheeted symphonies, and polar-cold oratorios...