Word: yunnan
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Year was greeted according to immemorial custom. Honanese hoisted red lanterns on 50-foot poles to scare away a ten-headed bird of evil. Kweiyang folk indulged in a kind of three-day gambling festival. In Yunnan no one would think of gambling (because if you gamble on New Year's you will gamble all year long); children gathered odd-shaped stones to represent bad luck, cast them into kitchen ovens to be purged...
Deposed Dragon. First he moved against China's strong war lord, one-eyed General Lung Yun, the rascally "old dragon" of Yunnan. By gun and guile, Lung had ruled that strategic southwestern province of China since 1927. His capital, Kunming, was the biggest U.S. air base in the country, and during the war he had played host to many a U.S. officer and touring bigwig. Last week Chiang deposed the "old dragon" of Yunnan, completing a political conquest of the vast western hinterland...
...years ago, when Chiang Kai-shek retreated into western China rather than come to terms with the Japanese, he was forced into an area barely under his control and hardly touched by the national revolution. The two principal provinces of west China are Szechwan (pop.: 60 million) and Yunnan (pop.: 11 million). Both were dominated by old-style war lords. In 1941 Chiang ousted the war lord of Szechwan, appointing an honest and progressive governor...
When the Dragon of Yunnan's turn came last week, General Lung was caught with his military pants down: obeying Chiang's orders, a good part of his private army of over 100,000 men was far away, in Indo-China. Chiang ordered Lung to take a face-saving job in Chungking. Lung refused: the Dragon's teeth were not to be pulled so easily. That night rifles cracked in Kunming: next morning a score of bodies lay at the South Gate...
...Premier T. V. Soong flew down from Chungking. He and the Chinese commander in chief, General Ho Ying-chin, had a morning conference with General Lung, that afternoon escorted the amiable old scoundrel by air to Chungking. General Lu Han, Lung's former aide, took over the Yunnan government for the Generalissimo...