4

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:fl,x\r/PUBTISHED MONIHLY IN ENGIISH, FRENCH,SPAN6H, ARABTC AND BIMONTHIy tN Crnuml gV

THE CHINA WELFARE INSTITUTE(sooNc cHtNG uNG, CHAIRMANI

vot. xxv[! No. t0 ocToBER reTe

CONTENTSTo the Readers ot China Reconstructs Soong Ching Ling ,2Crucial Steps in China's Modernizalion Wen Zong 3Self-Heliance and Imported Technology - How Shanghai,s

Petrochemical Complex Relates the Two Bian Hui g

Thirty You Yuwen 13Thirty Years of Controlling China's Greatebt River

Lin Yishan fiSeven Returns.to the Homeland -An Interview with Zhao

Haosheng

Country Fair Rong LieVirtuoso lsaac Stern Charms Chinese AudiencesAustralian Youth Orchestra in ChinaSiity Years in an Artist's Life Li KuchanBeijing Scenes (Photos)Do You Know? Tian An MenLargest Acupuncture Symposium EverChina's Wldening Research bn Acupuncture eian XinzhongThings Chinese: The Rhododendrons of Mount EmeiChinese History - Xlll

The Glory That Was Tang: 2 - Relations with ManyPeoples Jiao JiAn

Treasures from Abroad Prized in Sui-Tang Times yi ShuiFierce or Fanciful: Folk Animal Toys Can Be both

Xiao Qing and Wen ZhenChildren: A Young Mountain Eagle'Roof of the World' Still Moving Northward Teng JiwenGoing to Night School in Tianjin you yuwenAcross the Land: High Energy physics Experimental

Center

24

28JJ

35JO

39

4344

47

50

5458

60

63

64

66

Debate Among Historiais: A Forum onRevolution

The Karlst Caverns of Yixing Han eitouBuilding Up China's Rail Transport-An

Guo Weicheng, Minister of BaiiwaysCartoonsLanguage Corner:

Lesson 10: Going to yangshuoCOVER PICTURES:

Front: Victory Dance Zheng HuaningBack'. The Great Wall, Gao Hong

the' Taiping69

.70lnterview with

7478

6B

Editoriol.Olliccl Wol Wen Building, Beijing(37), Chino. .Coble: ,,C(tRECON,,

Beijing-.Generol Distributor: OUOZT SHUDiAli,

P.O. Box 399, Beijing, Chino.

79

Linking post ondpresent on newChino's 30th birth-doy, Soong ChingLing (Mme. Sun Yot-sen) soyS lts people,hoving won notion'olequolity ond embork-ed on soiiolism, oremorching towordeconomic ond tech-nicol equolity in themodern w6rld.

Poge 2

CRUCIAT STEPS TO MODERNIZATION

Tuning up the economy ond widening the scope ofsociolist democrocy ond low; decisiJns by Chino.sPeople's Congress. poge 3

TAMING CHINA'STONGEST RIVER

Flood control, irrigo-tion ond new buildingfor vost electric power;project chief for threedecodes tells of stepsin hornessing theChongjiong (Yongtze).

Poge 17

Articles of the Month

MESSAGE FROM SOONG CHING IING

WHAT MAKES ACUPUNCIURE WORI(?

Symposium of 500scientists, foreig nond Chinese, findso new opproochin recent worlddiscoveries oboutthe huinon broin.

Poge 44

SEVEN RETURNS TO IHE HOMETAND

Hoving left Chino in 1948,ond returning olmost onnuollysince 1973, Prof, Zhoo Hoo-

Yoletes his

of .-

ocms.

Poge 24

To the Readers

ol'Ghina Reconstructs'

-Ir--1 ry/'*5nN the occasion ofU P"opl"'" Republicwherever you are.

the 30th anniversary of ourof China, I greet you all,

Our 30 years have been a vast new birth. Worldhistorie we4e the victories with which it began. One

was the final overthrow of the feudal social system

which had oppressed and exploited our'- people, afifth of all humanity, for over 2,000 years. An-other was the final smashing of the imperialist con-trol, by practically every foreign power, severally orjointly, under which we had labored for a century.Finally, because the long revolution was brought totriumph by the Communist Party, our people wereable to uproot China's bureaucrat-capitalist mo-nopolies which were linked to both feudalism andimperialtm, and take the road to socialism.

The national and social liberation struggles of theChinese people have been inseparably intertwinedwith those of the rest of the world. We have beenhelped forward by the ideas and examples of thedeinocratic revolutions in America and France, ofthe October Socialist Revolution in Russia, and ofbattles for freedom in all oppressed countries. Manyforeign friends genuinely inspired by those ideashave fought shoulder to shoulder with us on ourown soil, some laying down their lives, as well as inmass suppo'rt movements abroad. We shall neverforget them.

For three decades now our people have been build-ing socialism, a new system. Their accomplishmentsare recognized everywhere. There have also beensetbacks, halts and errors. And we still. face immenseproblems of material and ctrltural growth, of utiliz-

2

ing to the full the unprecedented potentials'of so-cialisrn, in transf orming society, nature and' manhimself.

"The elevation of China to a position of freedomand equality among the nations," that was how in1925, in his last Testament, Sun Yat-sen summed upthe aim of his 40 years of leadership of China's dem-ocratic revolution. In 1949, under the leadership ofthe Chinese Commuhist Party, that goal was reached.Chairman Mao Zedong proclaimed at the foundingof the People's Rdiublic of China, "Ours will no

longer be a nation subject to insult and humiliation.We have stood up." Since then we. have establishednew relations with over 100 other countries, largeand small. They are equal relations. No other kind,with China, is now possible. Only in equality can

different countries help each other, learn from each

other what they truly need, work together for worldpeace and progress.

Politically we won equality by our revolution. Buteconomically, educationally and scientifically, we are

still behind the advanced nations. Our new LongMarch, our socialist "four modernizations" are aimedat fiiling the gap. In this effort, we look for coop-eration with all willing to woik with us for mutualbenefit.

Among our oldest and best friends have been thereaders of China Reconstructs, itself now 27 yearsold. I trust their numbers will multiply. We, on ourpar$ shall continue to perform, better and morefully, the task set for us by the late Premier Z}rottEnlai: "Spread further and wider the Chinese peo-

ple's wish for fribndship with aII the peoples of theriorld, and strengthen our unity with them. E

CHINA BECONSTBUCTS

GRUGIAT STEPS

tTt UIS 30th anniversary' of theI Feople's Republic of China

finds its 900 million people takinga key step in their advance towardsocialist modernization by thecentury's end.

Three years, beginning with1979, are being devoted to read-justing, restructuring, consolidat-ing and improving the nationaleconomy - in order to lay thef oundation f or well-proportionedand high speed development fromthen on.

Concurrently socialist democracyis being promoted and the socialistlegal system strengthened to re--lease and protect the initiative andcreativeness of China's people ofall nationalities for the immensetask.

Both programs, the economic andthe political and social, were out-Iined and analyzed with clear-cutfacts and figures at the two-weeklong Second Session, of the FifthNational'People's Congress held inJune - by Premier Hua Guofengin his report on government workand in speeches by other leaders.The Congress, China's highestorgan of state power, discussedand approved the report andadopted'the required decisions andIaws.

What is China's economic Situa'tion at present?

Three factors enter into it - thegreat progress made between theliberation in 1949 and the early1960s, the grave harm done in the

WEN ZONG is a staff reporter forChina Reconstructs.

OCTOBER T9?9

WEN ZONG

decade 1966-1976 by the sabotageof Lin Biao and the gang qf fourwhich brought the economy to thebrink of ruin, and the recoverysince 1976 when sound policies,enjoying general support, againprevailed.

In the year 1978, the third sincethe fall of the gang, China's econo.my began a rapid turn for thebetter. In agriculturq, despite in-clemencies of nature, grain outputper capita topped past records. Inindustry, the output of steel, coal,crude oil, power, chemical ferti-lizers and synthetic fibers increasedsubstantially - as did freight car-ried on the railways. The averageincome of the peasants - the greatmajority of the population

- fromtheir collective work was 17..7percent higher than in 1976. Sixtypercent of China's wage and

salary earners, in industry andother fields, got increases in pay.

In view of the preceding circum-stances, such gains in a developingcountry with a fifth of the world'spopulation can be termed rapidand impressive.

Yet, viewed from the standpointof what has to be done in the na-tionwide striving for moderniza-tion, the economy still has malad-justments and difficulties, somevery grave.

Hence the need for "readjust-ment, restructuring, consolidationand improvement."

Four Initial Tasks

Readjustment: The purpose isto correct major disproportions.Through it, within three years,China hopes to achieve:

lil GHI[il's il(lltER]ilzAT!(lil

anil StabilltyUulty Li Binsheng antl Sln Yizeng

t978 Perrentdge lnrreose wet ljlT t978 Pertenioge lntreose over 1977

Roil treight

l, 070million lons

Retoil soles

I 52, 750million yuon

lmprt ond

35, 500million yuon

lnveslment in

Notionol

39, 500million yuon

laol

8,400million yuon

Completed Proieds

99 lorge ond iledium Size

l!/ rorriol Units

Copilol Construttion

Irodors

113,500 3olo

145,900 B 9 %million yuon

Groin

304.75 I .Bolomillion tons

Eletrritity

256, 550million kwh

Chemitol tertilizer

Totol lndustriol 0ulput

Ioiol Agrkulturol 0utput

Cotlon

2161million lons

Oilseed Crops

5 2tBmillion tons

423, I 00million yuon

Sreel

31 .78million tons

(ool

ESil "'1 ,,1'bu 110milliontons l.l/0

q,693 .17,million tons

o Growth of grain and otherproduction by agriculture and itssidelines corresponding to thegrowth of population and ofindustry,

Agriculture is the foundation ofChina's national economy. OnIyif it is well developed'can therebe abundant food for the cities andindustrial population, and enoughraw materials for expanding thelight and textile industries forboth home use and export. Andonly when the 800 million peas-ants are well off can the domesticmarket expand, both for consumergoods and for the machines andother production aids which mod-ern farming requires.

o Development of the light andtextile industries at a pace equalto, or somewhat faster than, thatof heavy industry to provide moregoods for the people to buy withtheir rising purchasing power andfor a considerable growth of ex-ports - to accumulate funds forthe four modernizations.

o Closing the gap betweenavailable fuels (coal' qnd petroleum), power, modern buildingmaterials, transport and com-munications and needs of theeconomy in these baslc respects.

o Heavy industry to advance notonly in the quantity but in thevariety and quality of lts.outptit.

o Better quality, lower costs anda shortening of construction timefor capital projects. These wiII betemporarily curtailed in scale andscope and aim at getting the bestreturns for investment.

o A continued rise in the in-comes of workers and Peasants.

At present, this involves somefurther wage increases on the ohehand, and substantially uPPedstate purchase prices for farm andsideline products on the other.Total rural income, including thatof the communes- and of theirmembers from individual side-lines, is to increase by 13,000 mil-lion yuan this year.

The city people, besides theirwage hikes, are to have over 30

Anhui province reaped a good wheat harvest (hls year.

After renovatlng its old oqulpment, thlsunit of the Anshrn lrotr and SteelWorks produces more and better chains.

Xinhua

Xinhua

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workers of the Dongfanghong sitk Filsture Mill tn wuxi share their know-how. Xinhud

according to his work" will be fullYapplied. The income of enterprises,as well as of workers and staff,will be commensurate with thequantity and qualitY of their Pro-duction. Administrative organswitl be reformed f or greatereconomic efficacy. Local authori-

million square meters of housingspace built for them. And overseven million young people, nowawaiting job assignments, will takejobs in enterprises owned by thestate or by collectives.

Restructuring: Firm reform,step by step, of the management

of the eeonomy. The state willgive individual units engaged inindustry, agriculture, trade, trans-port and communications greaterpowers of decision and initiativein production and management.The socialist principle "from eachaccording to his ability and to each

Public trial of a criminal case in Beiiing's Intermediate Court- Zhang Jingde

;ii. l:i

CHINA BECONSTRUCTS

ties will have greater power to de-cide on how to work for the na-tional economy in their own areas,in accordance with conditions onthe spot.

Consolidation: The running ofexisting enterprises, especiallythose whose management is in atangle, will be shaken up. TheirIeading bodies will be strengthenedboth politically and professionally,and include technical specialistsreally fit for the job. Productionand operation must be more ra-tional and efficient.

Improoement: AII enterprisesshould improve in production,technology and management. Peo-ple in economic'work should raisetheir ability and skills. A numberof major enterprises are to adoptthe most advanced technology bylearning from foreign countries,importing technology and theirown inventive and innovativeefforts.

In carrying out these measures,it is the policy of the state to keepthe market prices of things forpeople's basic needs stable. Someindividual prices, at present irraltional, will be adjusted. Pricecontrol will be strengthened.' Another policy to be energetical-

ly pursued is the accelerated de-velopment of science, educationand culture, and of the training ofpersonnel for modernization.

Import of technology will con-tinue. How can China pay? Ex-panded foreign trade must providethe main means. Another will betourism, to be vigorously expand-ed. And some foreign investmentwill be encouraged. A Law onJoint Ventures with Chinese andForeign Investments, passed by theCongress session, lays the groundfor this on the basis of China'ssovereignty and economic in-dependence. Relevant regulationsare being drawn up in detail.

Important both economicallyand socially is prbmotion of familyplanning to control population rise.This work rfill continue and beirnproved. This is particularlynecessary now that young peopleborn in the late 1950s and 1960s,

ocToBEE 1979

(Conti,nued on p. 53)

A lDernoeratie CongreasA CTM socialist democracy was strongly manifeStbd in thefL rye1ft of the National People's Congress session itself and thatof the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Con-sultative Conference held at the same time. Members of theIatter attended the former, hearing the main reports. TheC.P.P.C.C. is a united front body with members drawn frommany sectors of society. The present session has the broadestrepresentation ever.

At the National People's Congress, the 3,312 deputiesparticipating submitted 1,890 motions. More than half concernedissues of China's economic construction. The rest related to law,national defense, foreign affairs, science, education, medicineand other subjects. All were referred to appropriate bodies forconsideration, the results to be reported to the next Congresssession.

Deputies meeting in regional panels as well as in full sessionpressed for many improvements in government work. Theyspoke out against abuses by some functionaries - includingpursuit of privilege, "back-door" approaches, suppression ofothers' democratic rights, bureaucratic attitudes and'inefficiency.Three women deputies, an aetress, a model worker and a teachersubmitted a joint motion asking that a code of discipline governstate personnel at various levels. This should stipulate theirliving standards, spending and housing, and forbid the use ofposition and power for personal or family advantage.

To strengthen the work of the National People's Congress,more vice-chairmen were elected to its Standing Committee,which acts for it between sessions. They are Peng Zhen, formermayor of Beijing, Xiao Jingguang, commander of China's navy,and two leaders of parties other than the Communist, ZhuYunshan of the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintangand Shi Liang of the Democratic League. Ngapoi NgawangJigmi, a Tibetan already a vice-chairman, was chosen to head.the Nationalities Committee of the Congress, composed of 81deputies from every nationality in China.

To bring more efficacy and experience to the leadership ofthe economy, three new vice-premiers of the government wereappointed on Premier Hua Guofeng's recommendation. Theyare Chen Yun, Po Yipo and Yao Yilin, revolutionary veteranswho before the cultural revolution had been prominent ineconomic work. Chen Yun is Chairman, Li Xiannian Vice-Chairman, and Yao Yilin Secretary-Genera1 of the new Financialand Economic Commission under the State Council

Like the Congress, the National Committee of the C.P.P.C.C.has been broadened and strengthened.

Among its 1,734 mernbers, 110 are new. They include the.85-year-old Luo Zhanglong, a founding member of the Com-munist Party of China, the patriot Miao Yuntai of the same age,former high official of the Kuomintang government who hasjust returned from the U.S.A. to settle in China, Wang Guang-mei, widow of Liu Shaoqi (Liu Shao-chi), Ding Ling, a weII-known writer and Wang Renmei, a noted film actress. A[ hadbeen out of public life for a long time.

Elected as additional vice-chairman of-the united front bodywas Banqen Erdini (Panchen Erdeni) Quoigyi Gyancan, a tradi-tional notable in religious and other Iife in Tibet.-_,- E

Self.Relianceand

lmported TechnologV

- How shanghai's Petrochemical complex Relates the Two

BIAN HUI

crude oil, the main raw material.Because of Hangzhou Bay's sharplydropping tides, sw,ift waves andstrong winds some doubtedwhether one could be built there.A research team spent three

Company sent 70 percent of itsplumbers and asserhblers to help.At the peak of the work, Shang-hai authorities mobilized most ofthe installers from the city's tex-tile, chemical, metallurgical and

A RE China's self-reliance andll' hsr import of technology incontradiction? Some friendsabroad have asked this question.

The two are harmoniously com-bined in the Shanghai General Pe-trochernical Complex. Devotedmainly to making and processingsynthetic fibers, it is the biggestconstruction project ever under-taken in China's textile industry.It is also the fruit of the coopera-tive elfort of tens of thousands ofworkers and peasants, and of dif-ferent areas of China.

Start from Self-Reliance

Twenty-five provinces, auto-nomous regions and municipalitiesin China were involved in the first.stage of construction, which hasalready created what is virtually anew industrial city at a once-desolate spot on Hangzhou Baysouth of Shanghai.

Some 50,000 local peasants andShanghai workers converged therein the winter of L972 to erect a seawall to protect the 670-hectareplant site. Despite snow and rain,they completed the dam in 32 daysand nights, having moved 1.2million cubic meters of earth.

Also built was an olfshore dockfor 25,000-ton tankers to bring

BIAN HUI is a staff reporter forChina Reconstructs,

8

Shop director SunGuojin (left) setsproduction informa-tion from a staffmember at the cou-trol panel.

Zhani Shuicheno

months investigating the iluestionand concluded the dock couldbe built. Construction workersanchored it with 50-meter-1ongpiles driven into the sea bed. Atfirst they could only drive one pilea day, but later they got so thatthey could install 13 a day. Thedock was finished in a little overa year, half the allotted time.

Nearly 100 factories from Shang-,hai joined in manufacturing andinstalling key equipment for theproject - about 120,000 tons in thefirst year or so. The Shanghai In-dustrial Equipment Installation

electric machinery industries to,assist. AIso 2,000 workers camefrom Sichuan province.

Foreign Plus Chinese Technology

First-stage projects, which wentinto trial operation in July 1977and were officially certified bystate industrial .departments inJune 1979, include six mills pro-ducing cheinical products, syn-thetic fibbrs and plastics; fourauxiliary plants to provide thewater supply, machine repair,power and waste-water treatment;a crude-oil unloading dock, a

CHINA BECONSTBUCTS

rrI:

.1 =.'="-t':: -:

Iht Si-;a.nghlii {iemerzri Fetrochemicai Complex,

iilrng f.iuanqiia.j, Z;. heads the crew o{ the central panelxt tire ethi.'le!-re umi{ im {,he petrochernical plant No- 1. Ye Shentu, 25, heads the tery-

iene plan6's es{,r"rization section,

Shi Y tLn

Zh"ang Shuir:hengZhong Sltuichenc

,3c * * x+,

2."), repa,i[s ii1-the *rlqln plant. Zhattg Shuit:lien;1

Zhano ShuicltengA fotest of spintlles in the terylene plant's long-fiber shop.

in the waste water treatment plant.Sedimentation tanks

double-decker bridge over theEluangpu River and water andIand transport facilities. In addi-tion, there is a 'residential areawith apartment buildings, medicalfacilities, schools, administrativeoffices and a cornmercial network.

By the end of May 1979 the planthad achieved a gross output value'of 2.4 billion yuan and had rdturn-ed to the state 920 million yuan -a term greater than the entire costof imported equipment and patentsand equaling 40 percent of thetotal investment.

Half of the key production ma-chinery for the plant was importedfrom Japan and West Germany.The other half, plus a great dealof auxiliary equipment, is Chinese-made. The imported technology isamong the world's most advancedand helps fill a gap in China'spetrochemical and chemical fiberindustry. The responsibility: forplanning, capital construction andinstallation was entirely in Chinesehands.

The first:stage projects aredesigned to produce 102,000 tonsof synthetic fiber annually - theequivalent of the amount of cotton

produced on 150,000 heCtares ofland. They can also turn out 60,000tons of plastic resin and 2.8 milliontons of petroleum and otherchemical products each year.

Here are some examples of thecombination of imported equip-ment with that made in China andwith Chinese initiative, An ultra-pressure compressor for a Japan-made high-pressure polyethyleneunit required 2,000 piles for itsfoundation according to the im-ported design. Engineers from theShanghai Light Industry DesigningInstitute analyzed the site's geo-logical conditions and decided that661 piles would be enough. Thissaved 2 million yuan and twomgnths of time.

China designed, manufactured,assembled and installed the equip-ment for the orlon and polyvinylmills and part of the terylene mill,as well as for the power, watersupply, machine repair and watertreatment plants. Designated andorganized by the state, 500' fac-tories frorn around the countryaird in Shanghai quickly provideda great variety of equipment andmaterials. Lanzhou, a city in the

far northwest China, sent the mainparts for a constant pressuredevice. Kaifeng in central Chinabuilt the entire oxygen-purifica-tion unit. Changsha on the middlereaches of Changjiang Riversupplied 17 huge water pumps.Major textile machinery plantsproduced a1l the machines andequipment for the orlon, vinylonand terylene mills.

Three gigantic steel structureswith towers and tanks, standingabreast, mark the skyline ofChemical Works No. 2. One is anacetaldehyde column from WestGermany. Another a vinyl cyanidecolumn from Japan. Betweenthem is a Chinese-made acetic acidcolumn. The inner-cooling processformerly used in China's aceticacid production was clumsy, com-plex and time-consuming. TheShanghai Chemical IndustryDesigning Institute developed anew outer-cooling process. AShanghai steel plant produced thespecial rolled steel for the newsystem.

China at first planned to importthe main parts for orlon produc-tion. Later she decided to build

China-made production line in the wool-tops section of the orlon mill. Shi Yun

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r"{;

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ocToBER 1979 11

'i;,.:,1',',',''',

The offshore oil dock at Chenshan.

the equipment herself . Fifteentextile machinery and chemicalfiber plants in Shanghai muni-cipality and four provinces weremobilized to make it. Steel plantsin Ar,rshan, Dalian, Beijing, Tai-yuan and Shanghai provided high-quality steel that would resistcorrosion. Factories in Anhui andGuangdong provinces developedautomatic meters and instruments.Within a year and a half thevarious enterprises delivered theirproducts to the worksite. Theorlon mill was completed Sccordingto plan.

Learning and Improving

Such a big and modern complexneeds a great number of technicaland administrative personnel. Butpetrochemical operation was begunwith only a handful of engineers

t2

and veteran workers with ex-perience in the textile or chemicalindustries. Three-fourths of thework force were youngsters newiyout of middle school. So the lead-ers of the enterprise asked theShanghai Textile EngineeringCollege to run a workers' trainingschool for the plant, and sentworkers and technicians to study atother units in the same fielil.Workers and technicians also hadto learn to install and operate theimported equipment.

Sun Guojin, the 45-year-olddirector of shop No. 3 in theChemical Works No. 1, had work-ed at the Shanghai Coking Plant,but knew nothing about thearomatic hydrocarbon extractionand xylene devices in the newp1ant. The aromatic hydrocarbondevice is composed of 150 units -

,11,..r..i

Shi Yun

towers, heat exchangers, con-tainers, troughs and pumps andseveral dozen pipe lines. Tracingthe blueprints, Sun explored everysection of pipe line, valve andevery piece of machinery, crawlinginto narrow holes and climbing tothe top of the high tower. Nowhe knows his shop like the backof ,his hand.

The filament finishing section'inthe spinning shop of the terylenemill has four false twisters. Japa-nese engineers helped train 40

spinners who had to be able to doff88 spindles in 20 minutes by theend of the course. AII women, theypassed the test. The fastest neededonly 11 minutes to complete it.Now the section is overfulfillingits monthly quotas by 10 percentand the elastic fibers it turns outare 98 percent top-grade. i j E

CIIINA RECONSTEUC'TS

Th

The yeor they come into the world--f949*one stageol the Chinese revolution wos thunderinq dolyn the homestretch. ln Jonuory the People's Liberotion Army took Beijing(then Peiping), in April it crossed the Chongjiong (Yongtze)River ond took Chiong Koi-shek's copitol Noniing, The Chinesepeople, with the Chinese Communist Porty i6 the forefront,werg fighling to free themselves trom the old regime, underwhich they lived hungry ond ill-e lod ond whose policies ondeconomy were controlled by foreign imperiolists. By the endof the yeor of their birth o new Chino, too, hod been born -the People's Republic hsd been set up ond work nos beingdone to right the wrongs of centuries, ond to creote the con-ditions lor o secure ond hoppy childhood,

When they reoched lheir teens they themselves werecought up in o new storm, the Greot Proletorion CulturolRevolution which beEon in t966" llrose were unsettling yeors

- irregular schooling, yeors in the couhtryside, , Along

YOU YUWEN

with revolutionory ospirotions there qome disruption hy LinBioo ond the gong ol four os thesi* fslse prophuis lonrr:ntedonorchy in the nome of revolution, reoqhing lor perscnolpower in the contusion.

Where ore they now, these young people who, like thenew Chino, were born in 1949 ond, like it* ore now lf ? Events

led o tew of them for o time to disillusion, clnicism, or topetty crime, ond such socioi problerns i*{t lrovn (hore yeors

ure still being solved.Eelow, three who with itrorr{ ',"dili iiirj olherwist, t€!ll thFiit

experiences. Due lo circumstdrcei no'{ $rqr!} of Chino's youngpeople hove hod the striking ;uecess of thcse three. Yet theirslories hsve on element in commsn Nvith those ol most ,oungpeople in Chino todoy*the desire to do their best io creoteo modern sociolist industry, agrieullure, sciense ond detensefor their country for this too is porl of the revolution whichis their birthriEht,

,..&.

WU QIANG, technical innovator atthe Beijing Silk Mill and delegateto the Beijing People's Congress.

T WORKED hard on my lessonsI when I was in middle school.After classes J would go out tocollect plant and insect specimensor work on my transistor radio orgo to some scientific activity inBeijing Children's Palace. I tookpart in math and composition con-tests. When we had a campaign

YOU YUWEN is a staff reporter forChina Reconstructs.

ocToBER 1979

to learn from Lei Feng, an out-standing Pgople's Liberation Armyman, I tried my best to helpothers and do good things for thepeople. At the end of my secondyear in junior middle school I wasnamed an outstanding Beijingstudent and given two gold pins.

The cultural revolution beganwhile I was still in junior middleschool. My schoolmates and Iplunged ourselves into it withgreat enthusiasm. We traveledabout to a number of cities - itseems that we walked over halfof China-to exchange experi-ence on how to make revolution.

When I came back I was puzzledto find that students who hadremained were attacking teacherswe had respected. I did not re-alize until much later that somepeople were urging the ReclGuards to follow an ultra-Lif 'line of attacking all intellectuals.Even my father, an engineer whohad always worked very hard,came under fire merely for beingan old intellectual.

I began to wonder why I shouldwork hard if it would only cometo this, but my father did not let

such things faze him. He kePt hisfaith and dedication to China'ssocialist revolution and construc-tion. "Many young people withbroad knowledge of science willbe needed," he said. His wordsand Chairman Mao's admonition,"Study well and make Progressevery day" helped me keeP onwith my scientific studies.

With a few close friends I beganmaking various kinds of radioequipment. We haunted the radiostores for parts and bookshoPs forany new literature on the subject.Thus began my interest inelectronics.

In 1968 I was assigned to workas a spinner in the Beijing SiIkMill. It did not have modernmachinery. The workers in thepreparation shop had to keeP theireyes on several hundred warpreels, watching for broken ends.Severe eyestrain caused many towear glasses. With support fromthe mill leaders I tried to makeequipment to do this job, but itwas not successful. Hoping to findout what went wrong, I read morebooks and went, to the BeijingChemical Engineering Institute for

13

help. Eight months later after re-peated experiments I perfected apulse-controlled automatic warpstop device which was quicklyadopted throughout the shop. Theeyestrain was ended and produc-tion went up by 20 percent.

This led to the desire to makethe weaving shop automatic -automatic shuttle change, TV in-spection and push-button controlso that the weavers didn't need towalk around the shop. For thisproject, on my own I studiedphysics, math, computer science,silicon-controlled rectifiers, lasersand engineering drawing, andread some material from abroad.

Later we set up an electronicsgroup to concentrate on technicalinnovation. We worked very hard.Sometimes I didn't get much sleeptor days on end while we werecarrying on an experiment. Tomake the weft fault detector I hadto try dozens of bulbs and regulatethe voltage over and over in orderto observe the changes of lampfilament and brightness. My eyesoften watered and hurt so sorne-times I had to stop and do eye ex-erciseS before continuing.

We finally made the fault de-tector. It has improved quality

and reduced' coniumption of ;iawmaterials by four-fifths. Sincethen our mill has produced over10,000 extra meters of silk withraw material saved.

Our group has made six kindsof electronically-controlled equip-ment for loomS in the Past fewyears. These have opened a newhorizon for us in applying elec-tronics in the silk industrY.

Now six of us have gone tostudy in college. People have ask-ed me whether I planned to takethe examination for college en-trance. I considered the matter.It's true that China's moderniza-tion needs a lot of professional re-pearch personnel, but it also needsa lot of workers with advancedtechnical knowledge. I feel I cancontinue to improve my theo-retical background in connectionwith problems right on the job,so I've decided not to try forcollege.

Now I am married to a workerfrom our mill. Since she is not invery good health, I have to doquite a lot at home. But she sup-ports my work for innovation andnever complains when I don'tcome home because of it.

CAO NANWEI, graduate studentin the High EnergY PhYsics Re-search Institute of the ChineseAcademy of Sciences.

fYfHEN I was five mY fatherW died and my mother, an

ordinary government worker, suP-ported us four children on hernot-very-high wage. The govern-ment paid our school tuition feesand later living subsidies while incollege.

I was lucky because of mY highmarks to be admitted to a keYmiddle school where I got betterteaching. I wanted to be a scien-tist. Once I had an argument witha classmate. She said that therewas no woman who was a leadingscientist. I mentioned MadameCurie. "But she was a foreigner,"put in another friend who waswith us. "There's never been onein China." I had no answer, butin my heart was unwilling to ac-cept the idea. The girls in mYclass were as good academicallYas the boys. ,WhY couldn't theYbecome leading scientists?

My elder sister was studYingphilosophy at Beijing UniversitYand I wanted to studY PhYsics. Ihad the idea that we could worktogether to use materialist dialec-tics to study elemental particles.

In 1964 I got a letter from mY

sister. She was very excited aboutthe visit to China of Shoichi Sa-kata, a Japanese PhYsicist, intro-ducing the "Sakata Model." Hehad applied materialist dialecticsto the study of elemental particles."Think of it;" my sister wrote, "ascientist from a capitalist countrygave lectures on materialist dia-

Wu and other members of the electronics group discuss a problem,Zhang Jingde

t4 CHINA BEICONSTRUCTS

With Professor IIe Zuoxiu.

Iectics for members of academiccircles in socialist China. Isn'tthis something for our Chineseyoung people to think about?"Prof. Sakata had met with Chair-man Mao several times during hisvisit.

I was in senior middle schoolwhen the cultural revolution be-gan. As it went on, our schoolcould no longer hold classes asusual. After graduation in 1968most of. my class went to live andwork in the countryside. I wasnot in good health so I did not go"

Since I had nothing to do, Ibegan on my own studying ma-terials that my elder brother andsister had used in university.Since I didn't have a teacher tohelp me, I took a great deal oftime and sometimes got to a thingby taking the long way around.We didn't have much money soI bought paper for my notes andexercises from a waste materialscollection station. Over sevenyears I finished all the math andphysics courses normally taken by

ocToBER 1979

S14n Yunshafl

university science students, andsome in higher mathematics andphysics. To learn more about theevolution of the elemental particletheory I studied English on myown and even tried to read somebooks in the original English andlooked through magazines inEnglish, .Italian and Japanese.

My greatest difficulty was howto get books, since I did not havethe money to buy them. Since Ihad no job I didn't have a workcard, and had to use my class-mate's to get into the Shanghailibrary to read. But I was afraidI would be denied the use of thelibrary if found out. Fortunatelythe library was only a 40-minutewalk from home so I could gothere every day and stay till itclosed.

In September 1975 Professor HeZuoxiu, a Chinese high energyphysicist, published a thesis "ANew Possible Quantized FieldTheory of C,omposite Particles".After reading it I wrote him aletter and gai" *y opinions lbout

certain problems to be solved inthis field. I also wrote an article"Field-Current Identity and theTotal Decay Width of the P-StateNew Particles" and sent it to theSci,ence Bulletin of the ChineseAcademy of Sciences and theypublished it.

I kept in touch with ProfessorEIe and he and other scientists inShanghai gave me a lot of help.After the gang of four fell thesystem of entrance exaininationsfor college enrollment wasrestored. I took the examinationfor graduate students and in 19??was accepted in the .Academy'sHigh Energy Physics ResearchInstitute. Professor He is myteacher. I hope that my studieswiil enable me to contribute to themodernization of our country.

fi 'it ,:j

I'L '.jHUANf ANLUN, composer withthe Central Opera and DanceDrama Theater. Of him, MargotFonteyn, famous ballerina andhonorary president of the RoyalBallet Academy of Great Britain,said, "You are lucky to have atalented composer. He has writtenreally good music," after she sawThe Little Match Girl, a balletadapted from Hans Christian An-derson's story with music byHuang Anlun. Another of hisworks, a piano piece Prelude andDance was performed by Chinesepianist Liu Shikun while on tourin the United States.

I lfY father Huanp Feili is headIYI of the conducti"ng departmentof the Central Conservatory of

t

-i,

15

Music. When I was born in thecity of Guangzhou he was study-ing music in the United States.In 1951 he didn't want to stayaway from China any longer. Hegave up the opportunity for aEuropean tour with his teacherHindemith and to finish his aca-demic degree and returned to givehis all to the new China. Thisfeeiing is reflected in the painstak-ing way he educated me.

I started to study the piano atthe age of five. But my mind wasoutside in the yard where myfriends were playing. For this Igot quite a few spankings, butnow that I lclok back over it, Ithink my parents should havebeen even more strict.

When I was six I was sent tostudy piano in a spare-time pri-mary school and at 12 I enteredthe middle school attached to theCentral Conservatory of Music tomajor in piano. One day I wasshooting away with a slingshotwhen a teacher named ShaoYuanxin called me in. I ex-pected him to scold me. Insteadhe asked, "Do you really under-stand music?" I made a face andretorted, "No, I hate it." Hedidn't get angry, but let me heara piece by Schubert and explainedit to me in detai-I. Before I knewit my resentment had vanished. Icould feel the music with everynerve. From then on I stayed atthe piano eight or nine hours aday.

My schooling was interruptedduring the cultural revolution. Myclassmates and I were assigned todo farm work in a village nearZhangjiakou, a city north of theGreat WalI. I wept bitterly at thethought that I wouldn't be able toplay the piano. Then I was struckby an idea: Even if I couldn'tplay maybe I could learn to com-pose. My father agreed. On mynext visit to my family in BeijingI got some teaching materials fromthe conservatory's composing de-partment. My father set me tasksof scoring symphonic music forpiano.

I took to composing in that remote village in a fever of enthu-

l6

siasm. When I learned that therewas a small organ in a primaryschool four kilometers away, Iwalked there every day to use it.I didn't even skip one day whenthere was a blizzard. The teachersat the primary school were verysympathetic, which made mywork there easier.

In 1972 the veteran composerChen Zi and others were planningto create an opera The Miner'sDaughter. I was asked to go toBeijing to coordinate the instru-mentation. I was determined tomake the best of this rare chance.In the course of the work I learn-ed a lot from these veteran musi-cians and gained a deeper under-standing of music itself.

Chen Zi was a student of theIate great composer Xian Xinghai.In the 1930s he and several ofhis schoolmates had gone to Yananto join the Chinese revolution.The others went into the army,while he became a musician atthe Lu Xun Academy of Arts inYanan. During the time I workedwith him Chen Zi often talkedabout his personal experiences and

his opinions on creating a nationalmusic. "Xian Xinghai studiedwestern music in France but heused it to serve China in herstruggle against the JaPanese in-vasion," he pointed out. "A Per-son may eat the meat of sheeP,but it goes into making him aman. You must alwaYs rememberthat only your closeness to theChinese nation can give Yourmusic vitalitY."

Now I am working on an oPeraon Yue Fei, a hero of the Songdynasty (960-1279). I have collect:ed a dozen taPes of an oPera inFujian province stYle to studY as

a basis for my work. I want toachieve the good qualities ofmodern western music such as

lucidity and free-flowing stYle-But I want my music to exPresshealthy sentiments, deeP revolu-tionary feeling and be in charac-teristic Chinese style.

I am married now. MY wifeworks as a pianist in a danceschool. Since mY mother takescare of our household and thechildren, I am able to give aII mY

time to composing. E

At the piano,

CHINA EECONSTBUCTS

Tt{IRTY EARS OI

TOI{TROLLI}|G CHIt.lA'S

G REA RII|ER

Navigation through thegorges in Sichuan Provlnceis now constant and safe.

Shen Yontai

T, vE BEEN working on the con-r trol of China's greatest river,the Changjiang (Yangtze), for some30 years. It should be familiar tome, you might think, and it is.But when this summer I went with100 other water conservation andgeological workers to survey itsworld-famous gorges, I wasstirred as seldom before. Standingon a mountain top, seeing it windeast along its seaward course f'wasstruck, as though for the first time,by its beauty and promise.For at these gorges, we shall buildthe biggest dam in China and oneof the biggest in the world, as partof the project to curb the riverfrom flooding and harness its vastpotential for irrigation and electricpower-to protect our people andbring them a brighter, more abun-dant life.

Born of peasant stock, I learnedthe tragedieq,of both too little andtoo much v&ter not from hydre

LIN YISEAN ls Cbairman of theChangjiang River Valley Lon8l-range

''.i;ffii

OCTOBEtr Tg?E

LIN YISTIAN

@mmission.

t7

Apex of the 2,000-year-old Dujiangyan irri-gatioD system renovated after liberation.

logy, in which I have no formaltraining, but from the ground up.And in the course of guerrilla war-fare against the Japanese invadgrs,in 1939 I dug wells and built irri.gation ditches with the local peas-ants in the base areas led by theCommunist Party.

After 1949, when our countrywas liberated, I was put in chargeof iontrol work on this mightywaterway. In the spring of 1953,when Chairman Mao Zedong wasinspecting the region, he discussedwith me the overall task, and laterinstructed me and other colleaguesto draw up a comprehensive plan.Flood prevention, to savethousands of lives, was thE mainemphasis.

With this in mind we waterconservation workers have traveledthe length of. the river from itssource, the Tongtian River inChina's far west, to the seaoutlet at Wusongkou (Woo-sung) near Shanghai. We took partin every big project built onthe 'tributaries. Over the years,we rejoiced in the growing achieve-ments in averting flood damage,irrigating crops to feed more peo-ple, the production of power forindustry, improvement of naviga-tion and scientific research.

In old China, under its reac-tionary ruling classes no effectivemeasures were ever taken to tamethe river. For centuries inunda-

18

Zhong Shuicheng

tions, waterlogging, drought, andschistosomiasis (snail fever) har-assed the people along itsbanks. Things began to change in .

1949, when the people took'power.Very early, despite lack of equip-mdnt and efficient technicians, thepeople's government set up theChangjiang River Valley Long-range Planning Commission. Over1,000 water conservation workers,10,000 hydrographers and geolo-gists were assigned to it.We did a iot of surveyingand inspection work and gatheredand collated much basic data.Here are the main accomplish-ments since then.

Tracing the Source

Detailed work was done tolocate exactly the river's mainsource. This had long been be-lieved to be the Minjiang River inSichuan province. In 1641, thenoted geographer Xu Xiake wrotethat the Jinsha River was thesource. But prior to liberation no-body investigated its upper reachesor the Tongtian River and itsfive tributaries.

In the summer of 1976 one suchtributary, the Tuotuo, was de-finitely identified as the truesource of the Changjiang. Thetowering snowcapped mountainsand glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibet

Plateau are the inexhaustible res-ervoir of its life-giving water.

This reliable survey has revealedthat the Changjiang River is6,300 kilometers long, and not5,800 as was formerly believed.

Jingjiang Biver Project

In the liberation year, in Wuhanin the summer of 1.949, I gotcaught up in a battle to protectthe dikes and save that major cityfrom.flood, Torrential rains hadrapidly raised the water level andspeed of flow in the upper reachesof the Changjiang in Sichuanprovince. June to Augustis the peak period of thehigh-water season. which lastsfrom May to October. Then tor-rents pour down from the upperreaches into the gorges, and floodthe plains of Hunan and Hubeiprovinces below, breaching manyof the flimsier dikes. Things getworse if too much silt accumulatesin the riverbed. If fldodwatersfrom the upper reaches meet thosefrom the tributaries in the rniddlereaches, inundation of great areasin the middle and lower reaches isinevitable.

The Changjiang River is his-torically reputed to have burst itsbanks over 200 tirnes in 2,000

, years. In 1931, its overflow drown-ed over three million hectares ofland in six provinces and killed140,000 people. A total of 28million people suffered from theeffects. In the 1935 flood, an-other 140,000 lives were lost.

Following the liberation, floodprevention became a primary taskof our newborn people's govern-ment, and was embarked on im-mediately. Some 3,000 kilometersof dikes were rebuilt and strength-ened. The key Jingjiang RiverDike was raised by three metersand widened by eight meters alonga l80-kilometer stretch, andnumerous small ones . wereconstructed on the iributaries as

outposts against flooding.Flood diversion and storage are

of prime importance in safeguard-ing key regions during periods ofunusually high water. The firstundeitaking to do this was theJingjiang River Flood-di.rersion

CHINA RECONSTBUCTS

Gezhouba, the initial waten conservation pro-iect wesl of the gorges, uniler construction.

Survey of thcehannel at thegorBes.

Zhou Youma

--The Jianghan plain protectedby the .Iingjiang River ilike.

Sun Shuqing

Shen Yantai

Shen Yanldi

Project. The plan for it wasapproved by Chairman Mao andPremier Zhou Enlai. In April 1952a force of 300,000 constructionworkers, peasants and soldiersthrew themselves into the battle tobuild it within 75 days. The jobwas to create a 900-square-kilome-ter basin in a low-lying plain southof the Jingjiang River, \Mith inletsiuice gates capable of admitting8,000 cubic meters of water persecond.

The project soon proved worththe vast effort. Late in July1954, heavy downpours raised theChangiiang to an excep-tionaily high level, threateningdisaster to the middle and Iowerreaches. Three times the dam'ssluice gates were opened to releasethe swollen waters. A seriousdisaster was averted.

ln the ]ate 1960s, after carefulstudy oI the Jingjiang River.system it was decided to do morework here - to straighten out twoof its biggest bends situated inHubei province. This shortenedthe tiver by 80 kilometers andlessened the flood peril.

Flood Diversion to Lakes

Many lakes linked with theChangjiang River, including majorones - the Dongting in Hunanprovince, Honghu in Hubei prov-ince and Poyang in Jiangxi prov-ince-were once natural reservoirsIor floodwaters. But silting andthe reclamation of Iakeside landover the years considerably re-duced their storage capacity.

After: the liberation it wasdecided to restore this function ofthe lakes. Around the shillow ones,dikes and sluice dams were builtto maintain the water at a lowlevel or check inflow at normaltimes. This increased their capac-ity to accommodate floodwaterswheh required. During low-waterseasons the land is drained andsown to crops (with the under-standing that they will be sacri-ficed if down-river cities or regionsare endangered by floods). Theseprojects, plus the Jingjiang RiverFlood-diversion Project, havecreated a diversion and storagearea of 10,000 square kilometers,

OCTOBER T9?9

with an ef f ective capacity of 50thousand miliion cubic meters ofwater. The middle and lowerreaches of the Changjiang nolonger face floods every year,When there is no threat, the landreclaimed from the lakes producesmuch grain.

Hubei is caLled "the provincewith a thousand lakes." Thefour largest, which includeLake Honghu, cover 11,000 squarekilometers. After liberation, adiversion dam was constructed aspart of a projected comprehensivecontrol program. Then, between1959 and early 1960, half a year'seffort by 200,000 constructionworkers completed four iongdrainage canals with a total lengthof 390 kilometers. In 1973, astorage and drainage project fourtimes the size of the Jingjiangone' was completed on LakeHonghu.

On the south bank of the Chang-jiang River a similar project wasalso built on the Dongting Lake(China's biggest inland body offresh water): Seventy percent ofthe farmland in ten lakesidecounties now yield high stablecrops regardless of weather.

Harnessing of the lakes has alsohelped fish breeding and inlandnavigation. 'It has cut down vir-tually the killer disease, schistoso-miasis. Snails, the intermediate

host of the organisms that cause it,f ormerly bred in abundance onlakesides, in river bends and inditches and pools. WhoLe vi),lageswere depopulated by this scourge.In the spring of 1950, wheninvestigating the Iake area nearWuhan, we of ten traveled longdistances without coming acrossany sign of human habitation.

On one occasion we did meet themiddle-aged mother of seven chil-dren. They all bore dif-ferent surnames, f or she hadmarried seven times. Each of herhusbands had died of schistoso-miasis contracted while working inthe paddy fields. Only becauseneither she nor the childrenworked in the fields had theyavoided the same fate. Time willnever banish those tragic scenesfrom my memory.

With liberation, the extermina-tion of these snails became an in-tegral part of the lake harnessingprogram. Countless iives havebeen saved.

More Land Irrigated

The greater part of the Chang-jiang River basin has an abundantrainful. But unfortunately therain does not always arrive whenmost needed by the crops.Drought used constantly to threat-

Ihe Changiiang-Ghina's Longest tiver

rnHE Changjiang, Cbinq'F largest river, rises in the TanggulaI Mountains on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and traverses 6,300

kilometers through one munigipality, one autonomous regionand eight provinces.

It is fed along its long course by over 700 rivers and streams.Every year it discharges one million million cubic meters ofwater into the East China Sea near Shanghai - 20 times as muchas the Huanghe (Yellow) River, China's second largest.

The basin drained by the Changjiang measures 1.8 millionsquflre tifth of China's total area, andequival t of the entire area of Europe. The300 mil i in this basin cultivate rice, cottonand rape on 27 million hectares of fertile land, growing 40 per-cent of China's grain and one third of her cotton.

The area is also rich in mineral and timber resources. Theriver carries B0 percent of all China's internal waterborne traffic.

21

ir;):t ...

A small-sized multistage hydropowerstation in Badong county, Ilubeiprovrnce. Huang Taoming

en farriring, especially in hillyareas. Since liberation we havebuilt over 800 big and medium-sized reservoirs and .130,000electric irrigation and drainagestations. Today the river valley isstudded with canals, ponds andreservoirs which irrigate 14.6million hectares of farmland.

The struggle to make wateravailable at the right time beganmany centuries ago.

The Dujiangyan irrigati0n proj-ect in Sichuan province on theupper reaches was built in250 B.C. Later, lack of necessaryrepairs caused croplands servedby it to shrink from 200,000 toabout 130,000 hectares. After theliberation, by the 1960s the ancientnetwork was restordd and expand-ed. Areas benefited rose tohalf a rnillion hectares, includinghill areas it had never servedbefore.

Among new irrigation areaswatered by the Changjiang isShaoshan, Chairman Mao's nativedistrict in Hunan province.

Lower down, the Taihu Lakearea is known as "the land of riceand fish." Over 100 main rivei

22

Lin Yishan (center) antl hydrologists, inclrrding 83-year-oldProf. Tao Shuzeng with a walking stick in the first row,surveying the site for the dam of the gorges. Ma ,Iun

courses and tens of thousands oftributary beds have been newlydug, widened or deepened to forma new multipurpose drainage,diversion and storage network,with enhanced irrigation andtransport capacity.

Sti1l lower, the Jiangdu KeyWater Control Project aims todivert water from the ChangjiangRiver to the Grand Canal andthence to the Huaihe River toirr'rgate the north China plain. Thefirst stage, completed in 1977 con-sists of four of China's largest irri-gation and drainage stations, a

check gate, a lock and a number ofwaterways. Already benefited are660,000 hectares of farmland.

Power and Navigation

Power generation and rivertransport are also provided for inmany of the projects built on themajor tributaries. Biggest so far,is the Danjiangkou project on theHanjiang River. The first stagecompleted in the 1970s includes a

Z.5-kilometer dam, a 900,000-kw.

power station, a Iock and two irri-gation canals. Power is suppliedto industry and agriculture inHubei and Henan provinces.

The total. generating poteniial ofthe Changjiang River and its trib-utaries is imrnense - estimatedat 230 million kilowatts, 40 percentof the nationai totai. Presentgenerating capacity of the 20,000big, medium and small hydro-power stations built sirice libera-tion is six million kw.

With ample water, supplement-ed from tributaries, the Chang-jiang River is a vital transportartery, navigable the year round.But the 1,03S-kilometer stretchfrom Yibin in Sichuan povince toYichang in Hubei province, alongwhich the river passes through itsfar famed gorges, was always haz-ardous. The people's governmenthas improved navigation condi-tions: 154 shoals have been re-moved and rock-clearance in thegorges now allows ships to passthrough day and night. The 24river harbors, 270 stopover pointsand 200 docks provide ampleloading and unloading facilities.Navigation including that on

CHINA BECONSTBUCTS

(\.fr2

'.alr)t \ rLndnqBng t{uer ValE hundary

\ l,1ain rssloir

,--== tkd drvmim areo

ffi Lar^qe ir'rgalion dislricl

* lmporlanl dike

* cdnal

@ Main hydromwa slalion

the tributaries has been extendedfrom 10,000 to 30,000 kilometers.

Gorges Project - The Key

Despite the achievements ofthese - 30 years, full floodcontrol has not yet been achieved.Only about three percent ofthe ,actual. water resources of theChangjiang are put to use.Navigation is still at far too low alevel.

Therefore, we hydrologists areworking on a grandiose scheme totame the entire Changjiang River,with the gorges as the key link.The tremendous flow from theupper reaches, the 12O-meter headdrop along the 600 kilometersabove the gorges, and the sheercliffs on either side make this anideal site for a huge controlinstallation.

In February 1953, when Chair-man Mao talked with me abouttaming the river, he pointed tothe gorges on a map and suggestedthat the outlet be bottled up, as afirst step, to form a reservoir.After the serious 1954 flood, heagain inspected the river, and

ocToBER 1979

.a lhthpila

Zhexi

during an all-night discussionlistened attentively to my reporton the gorges. Then he asked meto write it out for the Party Cen-tral Committee to study. In thespring of 1958 Chairman Maoasked Premier Zhou Eniai to lookinto the matter further. The Pre-mier concluded that a dam at thegorges would eliminate the tloodmenace and make the river servethe interests of the people for alltime.

Greatly encouraged by Chair-man Mao and Premier Zhou, weriver workers have done a trg-mendous amount of preparation inthese 30 years. In the early1970s, to our great joy, the buildingof the Gezhou Dam was begun.

This huge construction p-rojectis located at the outlet of thegorges. The first stage includestwo lock gates, a six-arch scouringsluice, a 27-arch flood-dischargegate and a power station. Duringthe second stage a 2,561-meterdam will be built across the river,and the generating capacity is ex-pected to reach 2,700,000 kw. Therise in the water level will im-prove navigation facilities. Theelectric power obtained will be

Huaryhai tu

P Poltotg hke

used in the construction of thq-main part of the gorges project.

This summer's new survey andthe current debate on its findingsare expected to decide which ofthe suggested sites for the dam isthe best.

Chairman Mao's famous poem,Sroimming envisions the splendidprospects of river control at theChangjiang Gorges:

Walls of stone rrill standupstream to the west

To hol,d back Wushan'sc'l,oud.s and rain

Till a smooth lake rises inthe namou gorges.

The mountain goddess ifshe is still. there

WiLL maroel at a world so

changed.

His hope will be realized in thenot distant future. Reservoirs willaccommodate all flood waters.Power stations along the river wiIIgenerate far more hydroelectricitythan the whole countrY nowproduces.

As a hydrologist, I am haPPY

and proud to play mY Part. E

,[---. './. (-.) li*-

/Izke

J$uryfiat

It\\ {

$

\ .+xry" t)'

Chongiiory (Yongtze) River Yolley nfiecrs

23

Zhoo Hoosheng (Howord Choo), o Chinese'Americonprofessor in the Deportment ol Eost Asion Longuoges ondLiteroture ot Yole University, since 1973 hos returned seYen

times to Chino, wheri he hos trsyeled widely, written odiclesond given lectures. Recently we visited him ot the seoside

resort o{ Beidoihe (Peitoiho} where he wos spending o brielholidoy. Mr. Zhoo's Joponese-Americon wife, Chie lmoizumi,took port in our conversotion. The following ore the highpoints.

Nanjing (Nanking), so I had a

front seat in the theater of historypreceding China's liberation.

In 1948, when I was 28, I went

to Japan as a foreign correspond-

ent. I was still in Japan when the

Chinese mainland was liberatedin 1949. I didn't know where togo - I felt like a kite with a

broken string. Because of the cir-cumstgnces at the time I didn'tcome back to China. Instead, I'went to the United States to study,found work there, got married and

brought up a family. I've livedthere since 1952, which makes it 27

years now.

A S FAR AS impressions of the4 r new China go, many Chinese

living abroad have gone through a

Staff Reporters

number of phases during these last

thirty years

The first phase, beginning withthe liberation of the mainland, was

one of suspicion and fear of the

China under Chinese Communist

rule, since most such people had

lived in an anti-communist en-

vironment and had been exposed

to anti-communist propaganda.

Even so, there was also a feeling

of pride over the birth of the new

China, and over the fact that the

Chinese people had stood up"

The second phase lasted Ionger

- from the outbreak of the

Korean war to China's defiance of

the attempt by the Soviet Unionto dominate her, and her own

successful A-bomb tests. These

Seven Retu rns

to the Homeland

-An lnterview with Zhao Haosheng

A SAYING among the Chinese/r goes: "Every stream has itssource and every tree its roots,"

meaning that all things have theirorigins. Before I begin talkingabout my impressions, let me tellyou briefly about my past. That'Ilmake it easier for you to under-stand my feelings.

I was born in 1920 in a verysmall, very poor county town incentral China's Henan province.

How small? Well, they used to say

that if you tripped and fell outsidethe town's east gate, you'd prob-ably pick your hat up or-rtside thewest gate. I grew up there, and

then went to study in Sichuanprovince during the Second WorldWar. Later I worked as a reporterin Chongqing (Chungking) and

24

Zhao Haoshcng nt the (ireat $'all.

CHINA RECONSTRUCTS

were greeted with surprise andadmiration.

The third phase started withNixon's visit to China and the bjgrise in China's international pres-tige. More and more Chineseabroad began wanting to identifythemselves with the new Chinaand to corne back to visit.

The fourth phase began with thepassing away first of PremierZhou, and then of Chairman Mao.in 1976, and the events related tothe gang of four. These shocks,

coming one after the other, chang-ed their feeling about the home-land from exhilaration to one ofapprehension.

In the fifth phase, that is in thelast couple of years, they saw thatChina has been able to withstandthese shocks, and both her strongpoints and weaknesses had been

revealed. People saw the realities,and they saw real hope.

munist officials and I felt nervous.What if I went and they didn't letme out again? Would there be

trouble if someone saw me er,rter

the embassy? Years of "redphobia" made me hesitate. Italked it over with my wife. Onthe day I went she was to wait ina coffee house opposite the em-bassy. If I didn't come out by noonthat would signify I was in trouble.That's how fearful I was.

I went on the appointed day andentered the embassy at nineo'clock. About eleven I came out,

smiling. Moreover, I had fixed a

date for another meeting. As I hadone talk after another with Chi-nese Communist officials my fearsgradually dissipated. Not longafter that I heard, in Paris, aboutKissinger's secret visit to Beijing.I was overjoyed and told myfamily that very soon we should be

able to go for a visit.

calmer and more collected than on

the first trip back, but I didn'tnotice any problems in China sincethey hadn't come to the surface'yet.

On my third trip in 1975, how-ever, I began to sense that some-

thing was wrong. There were re-fusals to let me visit some places,

conversations broken off at a cer-tain point. I was aware of a ten-sion, a strained, unnatural feelingin the air. It wa-s at the end ofthe year and I'd come back for mymother's funeral. I arrived inBeijing from my home town just

about the time Premier Zhottpassed away. F,or the second time

With his claughter Patricia, now work-ing in Beijing, in front of Tian An MenGate.

I put on the black armband ofmourning. I somehow sensed thatthe Chinese people's grief was

mixed with a premonition thatsomething awful might happen

and this told me that somethingwas definitely very wrong.

young man of less than 30 when IIeft the country, and now my hairwas streaked with gray. My wifewho had been married to me for20 years but had never met myfamily, came with me. I couldbarely suppress my excitement.The contrast between the oldChina of my memories and thenew China overwhelmed me. Iwas stimed by every tree and bladeof grass in my home town forwhich I had yearned more than20 years. Even the first tasteof shaobr.ng (griddle-baked sesame

biscuits) and goutiao (crullers) inBeijing brought tears to my eyes.

Once whetted, my desire to re-visit my homeland could no longerbe contained. I returned in both1974 and 1975. In 7974 I was

M';xJ "':

"[::",x""'.'" ]J Ti: M "-:i T', ;;;:'i T" i " o 3H " I

phases. I first resumed contactwith my homeland in 1971. InParis I saw a film from the newChina called The Red, Flag Canal.It was most moving, the story ofhow the people of Linxian countyin my native Henan cut an irriga-tion canal through mountains, Itwas 20 years since I had seen

China, and the sight of it, eventhough only on the screen, put mein a fever of excitement. I imme-diately rang up the Chinese em-bassy in France saying that Iwanted to drop in for a visit. Thevoice at the other end said I waswelcome to come and asked me tofix the hour for an appointment.

Later I began to have secondthoughts. This was the first timeI'd had contact with Chinese Com-

ocToBER l9r9 25

Then in close succession camethe Tian An Men incident, theTangshan earthquake and thepassing of Chairman Mao. I be-came more and more depressed. Ididn't even want to turn on theradio. I felt as though some calam-ity might befall the country atany moment.

China survived the shocks. This,and the neat and efficient removalof the gang of four, proved thesolidity of China's foundations.She had swayed without falling,gone through crises withoutsuff ering irremediable conse-quences. On coming back in 1978,

I saw that people had not lost hopethrough the momentous turn ofevents.

ON ^, trip back this year, I'vev sensed a new enthusiasm, a

forward-looking atmosphere. Peo-ple talk freely about everythingand anything. L,eaders admit theirmistakes. Compared with 1975 thisis like spring sunshine after a badwinter. Of course, I have learnedthat there are many problems Ihad never been aware of, andhave seen phenomena I hadn'timagined existed. On thinking itover, I realize that all these thingstvvere there before, only they'dbeen hidden under the carpet.Now they're coming to light.

Since China has been cut offfrom the world for so long, suddencontact with foreign corintries hascreated a number of problems -problems such as inevitably ac-company sudden ih"rrge.. Someyoung people, for instance, seemto think that everything abroad isgood

- nothing in China suitsthem. Thjs, I believe, is chieflybecause these young people don'tcompare the present with the past.

I lived 28 years in the old China,another 27 in the United States,and now I've seen the new China,So I think I'm qualified to com-

26

With his wife. Chie Imaizumi, chatiingthe Research Institute of Culture andguan where the Great Wall meets the

pare the present with the past, and

China with the United States. Ifwe think about it with a clearhead - has China wasted her timethese last 30 years ? China isn'tup to some of the over-inflatedboasts of the gang of four, but she

has already laid a solid foundation.There are three things nobody

in the world can deny: First, thosetriple mountains of politic-aloppression - imperialism, bureau-crat capitalism and feudalism -are gone, once and for all. Sec-

ondly, China is firmly unified.And third, China is able to defendherself, and the'principle of "wewill not attack unless we areattacked; if we are attacked wewill certainly counterattack" has

been tested and proven. Withthese three fundamental things inher possession, a slight lag in ma-terial conditions doesn't count forso much. But young people usuallydon't realize that. ComparingChina with other countries solelyfrom the point of view of standardof living they are bound to feelimpatient.

with the director ofHistory at Shanhai-

sea. Zhou Youtna

Now that China has these threef oundations, only one thing ismissing'

:ou".rr:"tto"._

MRS. ZHAO: I am Japanese. Mymother, who is 85, is visiting Chinawith us for the first time. She

was born in the Meiji period (1868-

1912). In this period the Japanesepeople were forward-looking,although their life was not as good

as today. She, says she sees a

similar atmosphere in China - inShanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou andBeijing. Coming back to Chinawith my husband, I find that theChinese people's life is improvingevery year. I feel the dignity ofthe people. When I first met mysister-in-law - the wife of myhusband's youngest brother - inmy husband's home town in HenanI felt that she represented theearth itself - stable, solid, honestand unspoiled. She's a womanfrom the countryside without, per-haps, much education, but I foundin her as I find in the majority ofthe Chinese people dignity backed

CHINA BECONSTRUCIS

by the long years of splendidciviiization. Every time I come toChina, I feel really that the nextcentury will be China's century.

+++

MB. ZHAOT Not so long ago

China's strides toward moderniza-tion - perhaps b<-icause they werejust beginning - were too fastand too big. But readjustmentswere made as soon as this becameevident. And the mistakes werecorrected f aster than would bepossible under any other socialsystem.

There are still problems, ofcourse. I believe China's modern-ization should have its own fea-tures and not simply be a copy ofwhat others have done. ChairmanMao didn't copy the Russianswhen he led the Chinese revolu-tion. It wouldn't have succeeded

if he had. Of course, you shouldsee more of the outside world, andbreak away from old conventionsand patterns.

A very important thing is to get

agriculture and education in good

shape. College students in Chinadon't pay any tuition fees and ?5

percent of thein get a statesubsidy for living expenses.

But care must be taken not tobreed a privileged class. The ruralareas are doing well now - mybrother Gengsheng personally toldme about that. Then there'sanother matter, and that is solvingthe population question.

Chineie circles in the UnitedStates react in a very sensitive wayto developments jn China. . . .

MRS. ZTIAO: In 1973, when wewent back to the United Statesafter our first visit here, I felt thatsome people from Taiwan triedalmost to avoid us. But recentlythings have changed. Those peo-ple just can't help being curious.They want to know about China.

OCTOBER T979

They are willing to listen to ourtalk these* U"r..

* ?

MB. ZHAOz Some things thathappen are quite interesting. Manypeople have told me that because

their parents came from Taiwanthey used to keep their copies ofthe China Pictorial, published herein Beijing, hidden away under A

pile of other magazines. But laterthey found out that the old peo-ple were reading them on the sly,and taking more and more interestin them. In the end those parents

simply asked their children to letthem read all the books and print-ed matter they had from the main-Iand. When China and the UnitedStates set up diplomatic relationsdemonstrations to celebrate theoccasion were held in New York'sChinatown, and the five-star redflag flew there for the first time.Some Chinese storeowners didn'thang'out this flag, because theyget much of their stock fromTaiwan. Nor did they join thedemonstrations. But when the pa-raders went past they clapped andapplauded most enthusiastically.

And here's something else. I'veoften taken out reporters or mem-bers of delegations from the peo-ple's republic to meals in Chineserestaurants. I was their host, butby their clothes they could easilybe identified as coming from -the

mainland. Well, on several occa-sions the proprietor appeared andannounced that the meal was onthe house. This happened when Iwas taking out two reporters forRadio Beijing. They wanted to ex-press their thanks in some way,but they had nothing to give in theway of presents. So they produceda pack of Zhonghua cigarettes tobe distributed among the cooks andhelpers in the kitchen. The entirekitchen staff came out to shakehands with them, because the

cigarettes had come all the wayfrom Beijing.

Such sentiments are very heart-warming. They're the kind shared

by people belonging to one and

the same family. It's somethinginborn, you might soY, and

indestructible.

I /fY daushter was born andIYlg""* ,rl ,., ,n" United states.

When she was four years old - we

were living in California then -I took her for the first time toChinatown in San Francisco.

Afterward I asked her:"Patricia, what did You find

most interesting there todaY?"

"Everybody had black hair,"she answered.

Young as she was, she seemed

to have found her "roots." Andso in February this year, after she

graduated from college, she came

to China to work. Before she leftwe said to her, "Although You'rean American citizen, Your roots

are in China. You needn't have

any apprehensions whatsoever,

especially now that there are

diplomatic relations between

China and the United States. It'syour natural and bounden dutY toact as a bridge between the

Chinese and American PeoPles."And so wiII it be f or our

younger generation, and lor theirchildren and grandchiidren. As

for myself, every time I've come

back, my homeland has treatedme like a mother welcoming a son

back from faraway Places, so

much so that it makes me feel

undeserving.So this time I decided not just to

look at things but to do some

work, and gave Iectures at the

Institute of Journalism.From now on I hope to come

back here every summer and do

something useful here. Let thalbe my small contribution toChina's modernization. B

27

Countn

T T was Sundav market day inI Xindu township in Sichuanprovince's Xindu county. The vil-'Iages were astir at the crack ofdawn as a steady stream of com-rnune members poured in from farand near, bringing home producelike chickens, ducks, eggs, tobacco,pigs and bamboo by cart, bicycle,basket or shoulder poIe. Thursdayand Sunday are fair days with thelatter busier. This Sunday wasparticularly busy, for the com-tnune brigades had given theirmembers a half-day off so thatthey could go to the fair and buythings they needed before they got'busy with the summer harvest.

As I edged my way through thecrowd I ran into Han Dashuanhunkering down in front of somesweet potato seedlings.. A 54-year-ol.d commune member knownfor his industriousness, he had justsold the duck he had raised for1.35 yuan and was selecting sweet

potato seedlings that someone eLse

had brought to the fair to sell. Hanlvanted to grow sweet potatoes onhis private p),ot for the tive pigshe was raising.

Most of the 20,000 who attendedthe fair that day were, Iike OIdHan, commune members buyingand selling small produce, and afew were representatives of com-mune production brigades. Suchsmall-scale and mainly private ex-change is still a necessary part ofcommerce in the stage of socialism.That day the voiume of trade was45,000 yuan, the equivaient of 15

percent of the total volume of re-tail sales in the township's state-run stores that day.

The Xindu fair is among thebiggest of the 5,000 fairs heldregularly in Sichuan province. Thistownship, located at the junctionof the highway between Sichuanand Shaanxi provinces and the railIine from Baoji in Shaanxi to

RONG LIE

Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, is animportant trading center for farm,sideline and other local productsf or the 13 people's communesnearby. It had long been the siteof a lively local fair. But from1968 on, Lin Biao and later thegang of four spread the idea thatsmall sideline production bY thecommune members was a vestigeof capitalism. The f airs lvereciosed down and commune mem-bers were not allowed to markettheir produce. They were unhaPPYbecause they had things to sell butno place to sell them, In fact, ces-sation of the fair-s opened the doorto speculation and black marketingby a few peasants.

After the downfall of the gangof four, from 1977 on, the statepolicy on marketing could again becarried out. According to it, com-mune members have the right toengage in sideline undertakingssuch as home weaving, keePingIi.vestock and gathering things Iikemedicinal herbs, and to sell theseand the produce from their Privateplots, provided that this does notimpair collective economic devel-opment. Sales are limited to whatcan be grown on the small Privateplots, so the volume of such trad-ing is quite small. It is from workon collective projects that com-mune members get their main in-come and food grain, which isallocated according to collectiveworkpoints earned.

Pigs, Peppers, Potatoes

To facilitate the fairs, the countydepartment of industry and com-merce has provided two sites nearthe east and west gates of thetown, at either end of iis shop-lined main street. Bamboo, timber

Production brigades. as rvell as individuals, bring in vegetables to sell.

CHINA RECONSTRUCTS

..

!.

:i

iE

&L c{}rnPl of thr: fair"

State stores operate booths too.

Weighing stafion rnaintained by the fair,s administration rlelrartment.

,r'!... .. :

Cleaning ee

Buying trabY chiclils,

high mountain regionRabbit raisers selling t(r

a state Purehasing agent.

The hanrbooware for sale.

Pllolos bu Wang Hongtun

ahd pigs are traded on the east,and on the west end there is brisktrading in farm and sideline pro-duce, From g to 11 a.m, is thebusiest time, though people arrivemuch eariier at.the roofed shedwhich serves to shelter the vege-table sellers, That Sunday, indi-viduals had brought more than 20kinds of vegetables for sale in-cluding lettuce, garlic greens,cabbage, bamboo shoots and peas.Along the southern side a roW ofpeople squatted behind theirbaskets of chicks and ducklings,hampers of live poultry, the headssticking out this way and that, andunpenned fowls which were un-willing to stay put to be viewed,Lining a broad aisle in the middtewere other people with eggs,chickens and ducks and vegetableseedlings. Along the west corn,rice and fodder were on sale. Ifthere is a large amount of someproduct to be sold, negotiations atthe fair are handled by a represen-tative of the seller's productionbrigade.

Ovei in one corner a crowd hadgathered to watch some peoplecleaning eels for sale. Eels areharmful to rice fields as they makeholes in the ridges. Children oftengo out in the evenings with flash-Iights to catch them. They selt for0.60 yuan per kilogram uncleanedand 1.80 yuan cleaned.

Co-op Restaurant near the fairgiounds is

Near the vegetable shed manypeople had crowded around somecarts of pepper seedlings. TheSichuanese are fond of peppers andvery particular about them soevery year the production brigadessell some to farnilies who want togrow ,Jhem around their homes.At the east end qf the poultrystalls were eight big baskets oflively ducklings. The seller wasa young man from a eommunebrigade which was trying tointroduce a new strain of duckf rom Jiangsu province, Hisdescription of tfre breed bs being

sturdy, easy to care for, quick-growing and early to lay eggspersuaded many people to buy andraise a few.

Pig-raising is the main sidelineproduetion in peasant households.This benefits the communemembers in income and also helpsthe collectives with manure soldto the production team. More than700 pigs, big and small, were soldthat day, It was near the summcrharvest, so things like baskets andscoops wovcn of bamboo were ingreat demand. Although communemembers can make these them-sclv€s or buy them from the state

,lt

Production brigade representatives buy sweetr potato seedlings at lhe fair.

ready for a crowd on fairday. supply and marketing co-op, theyalways seem to be in need of more.Large quantities of aII the above -bamboo ware, pigs, chicks andducklings, and seedlings 'andvegetable seeds - are sold at fairs

,, for these are rfeeded in both col-lective and individual productionand in everyday life.

The ability to market produce atthe fairs has stimulated homesideline production and helpedmany families to improve theirlivelihood. Production team No. 8in the Dafeng commune does not

' have much land. So for some time27 of its 44 households had in-comes so low that they were get-ting government aid. Last year theteam mobilized its members tomake use of the abundant local

OCTOBER I9?9 31

bamboo for both collective andindividual sideline production ofwoven articles. As a resultincomes from collective productionrose and in addition these familiesmade an average 40 yuan eachfrom home production in the firstthree months of 1979.

Prices Follow Supply

The seller is allowed to ask whathe will at the f air, but thisfrequently comes down afterbargaining. Prices generally find '

their own level according tomarket supply. When the fairswere first resumed there was notmuch to be sold and sellers set theprices of some goods two or three'times higher than those chargedby the state. Today, with greatersupply, prices have come downand stabilized.

In the past no free trading wasallowed in grain, which washandled exclusively through statepurchase and marketing. Thishelped to reverse the situationbefore liberation when grain wasalways short in spring before thewinter wheat was harvested, andthe Iandlord and capitalist dealerstook advantage of this to raiseprices. Planned purchase andmarketing by the government,which became a nationwidesystem in November 1953, guaran-teed that enough food grain wasavailable. But if a productionbrigade had a bad year, itsmembers might still be short ofgrain in ,spring. Individualselsewhere who had grown moregrain and had' a- surplus mightbring it to shortage areas to seIIat high prices on black markets.,The 19?8 grain produbtion in

Xindu county was five percentover that for 1977 so the averagefood'grain distributed per capitaleached 300 kg. in some feams.Now families who do not wish toconsume this much can sell itlegally at the fairs. This plusproduce frorh private plots hasgenerally made more grain availa-ble. for sale. Commune members

-from the hilly regions like to sellt\eir corn and beans and buy rice

at

from people on the Plain, andothers buy corn and beans foranimal feed. Over 6,000 kg. ofgrain was traded at the fair I at-tended in May, twice that at afair the previous December.

The reduction in the Price ofgrain has led to lowering of Pricesfor pigs and other livestock, andother prices have come down too.Vegetables sell from 0.04 to 0.14yuan per kg., nearly the same as

in the state store. Some peoplemake brown sugar from their owncane and now it sel]s for oneyuan per kg., the same as the stateprice. Bamboo is 0.12 yuan perkg., even below the 0.16 stateprice. The following table com-pares some prrces.

Rape-Hens Eggs seed Tobacco

OiI LeavesMay1978 3.00 3.00 5.00 5.40

May1979 2.L0 2.L0 2.80 '2.20

Stateprice 2.00 1.80 1.60 2.04

(Prices in Yuan per kilogram)

Aid from County Staff

Under a tree in the center of thewest gate fairgrounds two youngmen with scales were weighingpeople's purchases. This was oneof the three weighing centers setup by the county as a public serv-ice. After a price is agreed uponbuyers and sellers can bring theirgoods to them for weighing. Thereis a service charge of one percentof the sale price.

The state maintains a temporarYpurchasing center at the fair-grounds. One thing it buys is a lotof rabbits. Many people raise thembut other commune members don'twant to buy them, so the statepurchases them and exports theirskins.

The county does much to educatethe peasants about market policy.Its staff is frequently called in tomediate disputes between b"T-gainers over prices or to investigatefraud. A man found to have soldbad vegetable seeds for good

ones, causing considerable losses tothe production brigades, wasarrested and dealt with accordingto law, but for lesser offenses thestaff simply tries to educate theoffender.

Stop at the Teahouse

Sichuan is f amous for itsteahouses and restaurants' Asnoontime .approached, those alongthe street between the two marketsbegan "to fill up and crowds togather around the counters set uPfor the fair serving noodles, boozi(steamed buns with meat filling),rice with dishes and fermentedglutinous rice. EverY one of the200 seats in the Dongfeng Teahousewas occupied and six staff mem-bers were kept busY brewingtea. After a busy morning it wasa good place for fairgoers to rest,and over a five feri cuP of teaexchange the latest news andopinions on the croPs and market'

As the fair was breaking uP Imet Han Dashuan again turningtoward home, his basket on hisback filled with sweet Potato andpepper seedlings. He also had a

bag of glutinous rice which hewanted to ferment to make somewine. I urged him to stoP for a

cup of tea before going on hisway, but he declined. "Got to get

back and get these Plants in theground," he said, "and I've got a

lot to get ready f oY the wheatharvest." E

CHINA RECONSTRUCTS

Stern and Golub give a dem-onstration for students at theCentral Conservatory ofMusic.

E\ROM the very beginning of hisr visit to China ]ast summer,American violinist Isaac Sternshowed his friendship for its peo-ple through his warm relationswith Chinese audiences and hiswillingness to help their musicianslearn. He turned an open dressrehearsal before 2,000 spectatorsin Beijing's newly acousticallyreconstructed Red Tower Theaterinto a question and answer sessionwith the audience. He was askedabout everything from when hisviolin was made to how long a

ocToBEB 1979

violinist should practice €very day.But seeing that no questions werecoming from the balcony, from hisposition in the center of the stagehe shouted up, "Why haven't youpeople up there asked any ques-tions? Are you Shy?" The haIIexploded into laughter. Hiswarmth, friendliness and humorwere widely talked about amongthe capital's music lovers.

Some felt he demonstrated aparticularly warm feeling forChina when at one Beijing per-formance he canceled a previously-

announced selection and playedinstea.d a Debussy sonata for violinand piano. After hearing Chinesemusic on this visit, he told theaudiehce he was reminded of howmuch oriental music had in-fluenced some of Debussy's worksespecially in color and harmony,and he wanted the Chinese au-dience to know this too.

T SAAC Stern was the first violin-I i.t of world stature to tourChina for two decades. At hispremiere in Beijing, Mme. Soong

Coaching.

33

Xilht.ta

fnrmed concertos for violin andorchestra by Mozart and Bt'ahms,

Stern's recitals were regardedby all as a good opportunity forlearning. His strict and meticulousattitude toward music left a deepimpression on the Chinese musi-cians, He showed himself lamiliarnot only with his violin part butalso with the piano and all theorchestra parts. He put emphasison respecting the intent of thecomposer, the style of a work andthe trisiorieal backgrourtd of eachwork, Tlre perfnrmer's own in-terpretation and creation, heholds, should come second - if aperf ormer elverstresses his ownartistic interest and way of pres-enl,ation, the piece can be utterlychanged. Stern several tinrcs saidthat a musician must first movehimsclf before he can move theaudience. His serious approachtogether with his accomplishedtechnique made every programunforgettable.

Giving classes at the CentralConservatory of Music, like a lov-ing grandfather with his spectacleson his forehead, he listened atten-tively to the young performers. Heexplained points on violin playingin simple and vivid terms and dem-onstrated for the students. WhenLii Siqing, a nine-year-old boyfinished playing Mozart's ThirdConcerto, Isaac Stern hugged himand said that his skill was of in-ternational Ievel. Stern's vigor,diligence and superb skill greatlystruck the Chinese students. E

Pho(o rvilh Soong Ching Ling afler the performance.

With China's Ceniral PhilharmonicOrchestra, Li Delun conducting.

Congratulating Liiqing-nine years

Ching Ling, Vice-Chairman of theStanding Committee of the Na-tional People's Congress, HuangZhen, the Minister of Culture andHuang Hua, the Foreign Ministerwere in the audience.

Accompanied by pianist DavidGolub, Stern performed sonatas byBeethoven, Bach, Brahms, Debus-sy and Franck. With China'sCentral Philharmonic Orchestraconducted by Li Delun, he per-

34

si-oId.

",,}

A.

Exchanging pointers during a visit(o the Central Conservatory of Music.

Pholos bV Zhang Jingd.e

Vicior Sangiorgio, featrured soloisi.

Concertmasier Sandra Tanr,ihudek.

Frencb horn players,

THE Australian Youth Orchestrar composd of 74 young people

selected f rom a music summercamp, visited China early thisJune. The average age was 1?.The youngest was a 15-year-oldErench horn player. Lovely andgraceful Sandra Tancibudek theconcertmaster was herself only 22.Under the baton of John Hopkinsthe ensemble performed in Bei-jing, Nanjing, Shanghai andGuangzhou. Praises could beheard for the high accornplishmentand excellent coordination of agroup so young.

The wide choice of selectionsincluded classics and Europeanromantic works, works by nationalcomposers from northern andeastern European countries and byAustralian composers, and Austra-Iian folk music. High skill was

ocToBER 1979

shown whether in Mozart'ssprightly overture lo The MagicFlute or Handel's stately WaterMusic. Victor Sangiorgio, the fea-tured pianist, played Liszt andGrieg. The performers' homelandwas represented by Irish Tune andMorlly on the Shore by the notedAustralian composer PercyGrainger, and by the Australianfolk song Waltzi,ng Matilda-

In Beijing the young musicianshad a get-together with Chinesestudents at the Central Conser-vatory of Music. The hosts playedtraditional Chinese melodies onChinese instruments svch as zheng(2S-stringed harp), pipa (4-stringedChinese lute) and srcono horn. Un-der the baton of Mr. Hopkins, theyoung artists' of both countriesplayed the Chinese Spring FestioalOuerture.

35

Sygf,rs

The author in his studio. Huo Jianying

LI KUCHAN

cooled I divided it into three por-tions for the day's three meals. I'*'ent everywhere on foot, even onjourneys of several dozen Ii. Whathardships I went through tb learnto paint !

A classmate gave me thepseudonym "Kuchan" for' mypaintings. Ku means bitterness,Chan* is the name of a branch ofBuddhism, and in olden timesfreehand traditional painting wasknown as a Buddhist art. Once thepainter Lin Fengmian saw apainting of mine signed with thisname and took it for a painting bya destitute monk ! In f act I didnot fare any better than one. Somegood-hearted peopie advised meto adopt a more auspicious name,but I have insisted upon using ituntil this day. It reminds me of

, my antecedents.

T HAD started out studyingI western-style painting underXu Beihong and several foreign artteachers. But there was little salefor oils among Chinese so I had tofind someone to sell my paintings

1 Known abroad by its Japanese pro-nunciation Zen.

was born into a poor peasantfamily in Gaotang county, Shan-dong province. My ambition tobecome a painter was inspired bythe folk artists who decorated thetemples and monasteries in thatarea. When I was 22 I managed tomake my way to Beijing. Firstthere was the Work-Study Society.Later I entered Beijing Universityto study literature, then the PublicArts School to learn painting. ieked out a living by pulling arickshaw in the evening.

Beijing was much coldelthen.The north winds cut right throughmy cotton padded jacket and frozeme to the bone. Poor as I was,however, I held on to my dignity.I never sought the company ofclassmates from wealthy fami-lies - I was too pioud to put upwith their supercilious stares. Ithought of every possible meansto economize with my hard-earnedmoney. I would pick up discardedpencil stubs for my practice sketch-ing. In the most difficult daysall I could afford was one pot ofporridge per day. I sprinkled athin layer of dried shrimp shellson top of it and when it had

in am r&Es&'r A

I.INE might say that lor me this\-/ is a double-thirtieth an-niversary. I lived for 30 years inthis ancient city of Beijing beforeliberation and now I have livedanother 30 years in the city sincethe founding of the new China. Thejourney I have traversed is not onethat I can easily forget. Sixtyyears &Bo, in 1919, I came toBeijing just after the turbulentMay Fourth Movement. It washere while taking part in theactivities of the Work-StudySociety that I first met MaoZedong, who later became theleader of our new China. Here Ihave lived, studied, painted anddone what I could.

My whole career has been givento painting Chinese traditionalpaintings in freehand style andteaching' fine art. People saythat the fine arts should be aquest for truth, beauty andgoodness. But I found misery andfrustration much of the time. I

LI KUCHAN, 82, is a well-knowntraditional-style Chinese painter andcalligrapher. He is now a professor inthe Chinese traditional painting depart-ment of the Central Academy of FineArts in Beijing.

36 CHINA BECONSTRUCTS

to foreigners in the legationquarter and to buy the materials Ineeded through them. After beingcontinually bullied and fleeced, Ifinally decided to switch to tradi-tional Chinese painting. The ex-pense involved in oils was onefactor, but I had always beenattracted to this traditional art.

D EIJING had no lack of talented-L) traditional painters, but at thattime a stultifying "back to theancients" trend prevailed in thearts. Most paintings were no morethan insipid imitations of worksby four artists of the late Qingdynasty. Our good tradition ofpainting from nature was ignored;there was little creativity. Butamid this stagnancy there was oneartist who was blazing a trail ofhis own. Assimilating the goodpoints of the old masters .withoutletting himself be limited by them,he painted entirely from his im-pressions of life as he saw it. This

Li Kuchan with his teaeher Qi Baishi(seated) in the 1940s.

was Qi Baishi and I decided tolearn from him.

One day in 1923 - I was 26 -I walked into Qi Baishi's home inthe western part of Beijing.Without ceremony and refusingto accept the customary in-troductory presents he took me ashis student. When he heard of mysituation he even refused to accepttuition fees. Sometimes he wouldask me stay for a meal or buy mesome colors. I was more thangrateful, for I knew that hesupported his family with hisbrush and his paintings sold forIittle in those days, So as not todisturb him I would do nothingbut watch when he painted, tryinghard to grasp his intention andanalyze his brushwork, trying toask as few questions as possible.I never asked him for a paintingas a present.

Qi Baishi was a patient teacher.When he finished each painting hewould explain the techniques hehad used. He warned me, "Thosewho learn the essence of my workwill survive, those who copy mewill perish." He advised me tof ollow in his tradition, drawinginspiration from my own ex-perience of life, but not to imitatehis paintings.

One of his unforgettable quali-ties was superhuman diligence.The memory of it has spurred meon till this day. Through severaldozen years he painted from sixin the morning until eleven atnight, stopping only for meals andbrief rests. He refrained fromdrinking and smoking, and wastedno time on cultivating social con-tacts or seeking benefactors amongthe rich and powerful.

ETINALLY I became a professorI of painting in a college, butlife continued to be insecure.Those were times plagued by war-lord fighting, skyrocketing pricesand frequent wage cuts. My mainsalary was not much so to supportmy family I had to lecture inseveral other places. OccasionallyI was lucky en-ough to sell a paint-ing at an exhibition. In those dif-ficult days I made some friendsoutside art circles - friends whowere poor but honest and upstand-

Premier Zhou Enlai with some of themembers of the Beijing Chinese Tra-ditional Painting Academy when it wasfounded in May f957. Li Kuchan is inthe center row, first lefi.

ing. After the Japanese occupa-tion of Beijing the Chinese Com-munist Party intensified its under-'ground activities both inside aridoutside the city. Often a friend ofmine would bring strangers to stayfor several days in my smallstudio. By then I had stoppedteaching because I refused to workfor the Japanese, who had takenover the schools. My family livedsolely on the proceeds from m5lpaintings and we could give thesecomrades only very simple fare byselling paintirr-gs. I managed tobuy them second-hand clothes fordisguises and supply them withmoney for travel expenses. Eorthis I was reported to Japanesegendarmes and arrested. In theprison, situated in the basement ofthe old Beijing University, I wastortured. I bear a big scar on myleg from it to this day.

Beijing was liberated in 1949.At that time my financial problemswere even r:rore serious. Then Ithought of Chairman Mao withwhom I had studied in the Work-.Study Society. I wrote him a letter

w-

ocToBER 1979 5l

in big brush characters on a rollof paper three meters long. Chair-man Mao mentioned my problemin a letter to Xu Beihong, pre-sident of the Central Academy ofFine Arts and sent one of his sec-retaries to my home. "ChairmanMao is busy," he said. "He cgn'tcome himself so he sent me to seewhat we can do. The Chairmansays our country's economy is stillin difficulty but things will im-prove anci life wiil get better. Heurges you to go on painting so asto leave something to posterity. . . ."

"Busy as he is, Chairman Maostill thinks of me," I said to thesecretary. "Truly, he makes thepeople's welfare his first concern.I regret now that I wrote him thatletter burdening him with my per-sonal problems," Soon afterwardChairman Mao gave instructions toassign me work and help me overmy financial problems, He knewwhat the common people felt.

EIOR a while after liberation II worked in the land. reformmovement in Sichuan province.Then I turned to teaching freehandtraditional painting which is whatI have been doing ever since. Nowand then I took part in social ac'tivities. I gave classroom paintingdemonstrations and helped studentsanalyze my drawings, This madeit easier for the students to com-prehend diffiiult points. I taughtstudents from Egypt, India andCzechoslovakia and became fastfriends with them.

Since foreign friends were in-teresteil in the freehand school ofChinese traditional painting I wasoften invited to give demonstra-tions. Some got so excited thatthey hugged me. One man had abristly beard that tickled me. Buteverybody was happy. I felt re-warded when I thought that thisChinese art had played such an im-portant part in building up goodwill.

Suddenly in 1966, .when I wasnearly 70, I was plunged into hu-miliation. Instigated by bad peo-ple some students attacked me andmany others on the faculty, sayingwe were ttmonsters,t' "reactionaryacademic tyrants" and "oldscoundrels who poison the mindsof the young." We lived in con-

38

stant fear. We were dragged ontothe platform before a crowd to beaccused. I was subjected to beat-ings, curses and forced labor. Wewere kept under guard in a"monster shed" - an unofficialand illegal detention room in theschool - and more than onceparaded through the streets in atruck. When we passed the placeswhere I had pulled a rickshaw inthe old days, I felt particularlybitter. Here I had once suffered.But what had our new societycome to that I was being forced tosuffer again?

DREMIER Zhou did much toI bring old artists back into thepicture. In 1972 he wanted guesthouses for foreign visitors decorat-ed with paintings. The State Coun-cil asked me and some other oldartists to do some. At first Icouldn't shake off my fears afterthose terrible years, but friendsand colleagues encouraged me.Words fail to describe my agitationon the day I took up my"brushagain. Before long I lost myselfin my work. I painted a Iargepiece 4X6 meters in size, the big-gest in my career. In the next twoyears I produced 300 scrolls. Oneday a message from Premier Zhouwas relayed to me telling me thatI had done a good job. "Kuchan'sbamboos are excellent," the Pre-mier commented. This inspired rneto work ali the harder.

But the gang of four once againgained the upper hand. Theywhipped up a campaign to criticize

u'hat they called 'ocapitalist re-storation" and ":'everting to thepast." The pictures we had donebecame "black paintings." Onceagain I was subjected to abuse andattack. I had done a picture en-titled."Lotus and Kingfishers" forthe Beijing International Club, andPremier Zhou had approved of it.But the gang of four put it in anexhibition of paintings to be crit-icized, claiming that the eightlotus flowers in it were libeloustake-offs on their "eight modeltheatrical works" which they hadboosted to the skies. With all thisthey were really attacking PremierZhou by innuendo.

When the gang of four wasfinally deposed by the Party Cen-tral Committee headed by Chair-man Hua we old people went fromhouse to house talking about the.happy news. Visitors filled myhome. In the first flush of joy andexcitement I painted several pic-tures of red plum blossoms inbloom. These I sent to an exhibi-tion in the National Art Gallery,a place where for years I had notdared set foot.

Now I am glad to see China em-barking on a rrew period of orderand prosperity. I feel veryfortunate to have lived to see thishappy day. That is why I askedsomebody to carve me a narhe sealwith the characters "Happy to bealive in these great times." I oftenuse it to mark my pictures. ' Mypainter friends have taken up theirbrushes again and paint withenthusiasm. tr E

"Clearing after Snow," painted shortly after the alownfB,ll of the gang of four.

CHINA REbONSTEUCTS

A drove of mail deliv-erers Ieaves the mainpost office.

Zhou Youma

BEIIING

SCENES

Taijiqian exercises Heaven) Park. Zhou Youma

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Spring at the Summer palace.Liu Chen

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Winter on Kunming Lake, Summer Palace.Liu Changzhong

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Ruins of an earlier summer palace yuanrning.vuan,rlestroyed in 1900 by troops ot eight alliecl poirers.

Zhau Youma

ZhOtt.liandongAuturnn at Fragrant llill.

East side cloverleaf.

A typical oltl Beiiingcourtyard dwellins.

Beijing duck restaurant.

Worker's farnily at supper.

Pholos by Zltou Youma

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rf IAN AN MEN Gate is situatedr in the center of Beijing, andits imposing structure appears onChina's national emblem. It washere that Chairman Mao Zedongproclaimed the f ounding of thePeople's Republic of China onOctober 1, 1949.

The present Tian .An Men Gate(The Gate of Heavenly Peace), thefront gate to the Imperial Palace,was built in 1651. The 33.7-meter-high gate tower hasfive entrances through the redwall. It has nine bays along itslength and five along its width.According to The Book ofChanges, a very ancient philo-sophical work, the combination ofnine and five symbolizes the im-perial throne. The tower has 36high windows with lozenge-shapedIatticework.

Just outside is a moat called theJinshuihe (River of Golden Water)which is spanned by five marblebridges. To the south are twomarble columns engraved with acloud-and-dragon design andtopped with the figure of amythical animal. Two big stonelions flank the main entrance.

During the Ming (1368-1644)and Qing (1644-1911) dynas-

OCTOBER T9?9

Tian An Men Square during Qingmjng festiyal in 1976' Xu Xiat)datl

Tian An Men has been rePair-ed and repainted many timessince the founding of the PeoPle'sRepublic of China. The sguare hasbeen enlarged to 40 hectares andpaved with concrete blocks. In1958 the Monument to the PeoPle'sHeroes was erected in its southernpart. The f ollowing year twomagnificent buildings were Put uPon either side of the square - theGreat HaII of the PeoPle to thewest and the Museum of ChineseHistory and Museum of theChinese Revolution to the east. In19?6 the Memorial HalI toChairman Mao Zedong was builtto the south of the mcinument.Here people from all over Chinaand the world come to view hisremains in token of their resPectfor his great achievements.

On April 5, 19?6 at Qingming

- the traditional day in China tocommemorate the dead - a rnillionpeople flocked to Tian An MenSquare to honor the memorY ofthe late Prernier Zhou Enlai andprotest against the gang of four'sattempt to seize supreme Power.This event, a prelude to the gang'sdownf all several months later,wrote another chapter in thehistory of Tian An Men. E

ties important state ceremonieswere held at Tian An Men. Theyincluded sacrificial rites, sendingoff military expeditions, proclama-tions of imperial edicts and an-nouncements of the names of thosewho had passed imperial examina-tions, When the emperor personal-ly appeared, it wai with a corpsof 110,908 officers and guards - a

scehe of great pomp. EverYautumn in front of the gate theMinistry of Punishments stagedre-trials of death-penalty Cases

presented from different provinces.In 1644 when the peasant army

that overthrew the Ming dynastYentered Beijing its leader LiZicheng shot an arrow at thename board over Tian An Men,showing the people's anger andhatred toward the feudalr[onarchy.

AN Mav 4. i919 students andu *o.t

"rs held a demonstration

in front of Tian An Men againstthe imperialists and warlords.This, the famous "May FourthMovement," ushered in the newdemocratic revolution in moderirChina.

43

ERGEST ACIJPUNCTURE SY]-|POSIU1,| EVER

China's National Symposium on Acupunctureand Moribustion add Acupuncture Anesthesia lu,asheld, in Beijing from June 1 to 5. Attending it uereouer i00 Chinese specialists in this field as roell as150 foreign scholors, practitioners and other interest-ed persons from 30 countries. Ooer 500 papers lDereread, 25 of them bg Joreign particepants. This largestsymposium euer held on thi.s subject summarized anddiscussed China's usork in acupuncture oDer the past30 gears, especially results of clini,cal" application andtheoretical studg in recent years. Stccesses ach,ieaediu, other countries uere also reported. Our staffreytorter interuieused some participants.

Zhang Anzhong, from the acupuncture aneslhesia researchgroup in the Shanghai First Medical College, reading a re-search paper, "Endorphins and Acupuncture Analgesia,"

*.

Qiu Maoliang (Professor of theNanjing College of TraditionalChinese Medicine):

Lin ChuanOf all the symPosiums on acu-

puncture and acupuncture anes-thesia I've attended, nationwide orregional, this has been the largestand most fruitful. I am an acu-puncture researcher with 40 Yearsof clinical practice, and I havelearned a good deal not only frommy colleagues in China but alsofrom the many outstanding Prac-titioners and students of acuPunc-ture from other countries.

The theses read at the sYmPo-sium show that a great deal hasbeen done both in China andabroad in applYing modern scienceto the study of this ancient medicalskill. Previously reports on acu-puncture written bY Chinese tra-ditional doctors were often con-fined to observing and summariz-ing its. effects. The researchpapers presented this time, such as

those on treating coronary heartdisease and correcting the positionof the fetus, have provided moreaccurate data obtained through theuse of modern scientific instru-ments and methods such as electro-cardiograms, rheoencephalograms*and endocrinology. These willgreatly help us in analYzing anddetermining the reasons for thecurative effects of acuPuncture,

rA rheoencephqlograph is a medicaldevice used to test and examine thestate of blood vessels and llow of bloodinside the head.

CHINA RECONSIRUCTS

and will take this ancient medicalart an important step forward.The papers on the channel theorypresent new achievements provingthat this ancient theory can be ex-plained in terms of modern science.

Haruto Kinoshita (Chairman of theAcupuncture and MoxibustionSociety of Japan):

This has been an academic dis-cussion of very high level. I wassurprised and impressed by theefforts and successes China hasmade in acupuncture, both clini-cally and theoretically.

Why can acupuncture suppresspain? Why can it be used in sur-gery? What is the mechanism ofacupuncture analgesia? These areproblems of common interest inmedical circles. Research on en-dorphins in some countries is help-ing to unravel the mystery ofacupuncture anesthesia. In addi-tion to their painstaking workon endorphins, Chinese medicalscientists have achieved com-mendable results in studyingacupuncture anesthesia from thestandpoint of electrophysiologyand anatomy.

The channel theory is the basisof classical acupuncture treatment.Many reports by Chinese doctorson the phenomenon of propqgatedsensation along channels* andconduction pathways of needlingsensation are particularly impres-sive. More time and money havebeen put into such research inChina than in any other country,including Japan. China has ob-served the phenomena of pro-

ocToBER 1979

5$u* *.,;

A Iarger-than-life bronze figure with acupuncture pointsmade by Nanjins Medical College, a replica of one first usedfor teaching purposes in the year 1207.

-W:

pagated sensation along channelsin thousands of subjects - menand women, old and young, in,bothgood and poor health. Such large-scale investigation would be un-thinkable in Japan. In China,nationwide, coordinated studiescarried on by medical colleges andinstitutes are conducted on allaspects of acupuncture and acu-puncture anesthesia. This hasproduced a vast amount of datainvaluable for future research.

Acupuncture was introducedinto Japan 1,500 years ago. Bannedby government law for a timeafter the Meiji Reform late in thelast century, it was used onlyamong the people. But promotedby enthusiasts, acupuncture beganto command more and more at-tention. Now it is used andstudied in several major medicalinstitutes in Japan. Today in mycountry 40,000 practitioners and2,000-3,000 researchers are engagedin acupuncture. We hope we Willhave more chances to expand ex-changes and cooperation in thisfield with Chinese scientists. Ihave suggested to my Chinese col-leagues that we work together onnumbering the acupuncture pointsunder a unified international sys-tem So that foreigners can learnthem more easily.

Zhang Hetotto

David J. Mayer (Professor of phy-siology in the medical college,Virginia Commonwealth Univer-sity in the United States)**:

I'm most gratified to have thechance to attend this unprecedent-ed academic discussion. This is agood opportunity for the partici-pants to exchange experience andopinions. I'm impressed by the

t Phenomenon of propagated sensationalong channels: a feeling of soreness,swelling, numbness and warmth,caused by stimulating certain points onthe body by needling and transmittedalong the jing\uo or channels.** Professor Mayer made the first at-tempts to relate opiate receptorspresent in the membranes of lbrain cellswith acupuncture analgesia through ex-periments with naloxone.

45

ITatt XiaoltuaProf. Bruce Porneranz from Canada asks a question aa a panel session.

Symposlum participants u,atch a Cac-s&rean section under acupunciureanesthesia in the Bei jing MaternityHospital. Han Xiaohua

quantity and quality of the paperspresented by Chinese researchers,

My interest was triggered in1964 when I read Zou Gang's thesispublished in Scientia Sinica. Ac-cording to Zou Gang, injecting 0.1percent of the normal dose ofmorphine into "the central graymatter" of the brain can producea strong analgesic effect. This,to me, was a most enlighteningdiscovery in the physiology of pain.

In 1971 China's publication ofits successes in surgery underacupuncture anesthesia intensifiedmy interest. Recent experimentsand studies by scientists of severalcountries have initially provedthat a pain eontrol system existswithin the central nervous systemwhich involves morphine-like substances called endorphins. Need-ling stimulation can increase theendorphin contents rapidly, andsuppress pain. In 1975 I made anexperiment using naloxone, anantagonist of morphine to blockthe effect of acupuncture anal-gesia. It showed that this an-tagonist of morphinc likewise con-teracts the effect of acupunctureanalgesia. Furthermore, it prove,Cthat acupuncture analgesia is re-

46

lated to the endorphin system inthe brain.

I have, read several theses writ-ten by research groups in acupunc-ture anesthesia at the BeijingMedical College and ShanghaiFirst Medical College. At thesymposium I met and talked withChinese colleagues whom I knewfrom medical magazines andthrough letters. I learned whata great deal'China has done instudying endorphins, and' howmuch in common I have with myChinese colleagues. I found theChinese scientists working, veryhard. They are real scientists, Ihope one day to read their thesesin international, as well as Chi-nese, academic journals.

R. H. Bannerman (Program Man-ager of Traditional Medicine in theWorld Health Organization):

It gives me great pleasure toattend this symposium on behalf ofthe World Health Organization.

Many changes have taken placein our work since the People'sRepublic of China joined the WHOin L972. Since 1975 WHO has

held several training courses inChina and made a number ofstudy touls. Of these, I thinkthose concerned with acupunctureand Chinese traditional medicinewere the most popular. Forty-seven doctors from 26 developingcountries attended. In 1977 a WHOdelegation came to this country tostudy Chinese traditional medicine.Its 29 participants included seniorhealth administrators, professorsand members of the field healthstaff from all six WHO regions,We are delighted by this sympo-sium, because it enables still morescientists and doctors to exchangeknowledge and study China's ex-perience,

Acupuncture has a history of2,000.years in China. Stone knivesand other sharp tools were onceused as needles. Only 40 yearsago, the use of acupuncture skillswas handed down from generationto generation and still limited tothose who inherited it. Now I'mhappy to say that this skill hasbecome available to everyone, in-cluding peasants in rural areas.Improved equipment is being em-ployed, such as stainless steelneedles and electrical devices toreplace rhanual manipulation ofthe needles.

In recent years we have seenmany effective methods of healthcare in China, kindling hope in thehearts of health administrators inthe developing countries, who facemany problems. China's successesin public health work since 1949convince me that the goal set bythe WHO of "health for all by theyear 2000" can become a realitYfor every country.

CHINA RECONSTRUCTS

ehima's iemlm e$*ere

sn (upumeture

A CUPUNCTURE and moxibus-la. 116p constitute an importantpart of Chinese traditional medi-cine and pharmacology. Foundamong relics of the primitivesociety of Cfrina's New Stone Age(10,000 to 4,000 years ago) "pin-ning stones" wbre the predecessorsof acupuncture nee,Cles. By thetime of the Spring and Autumnand Warring States periods (770-221 B.C.), the theory of Jingluo(channels and collaterals) hadbeen established. It was system-atically illustrated in the ancientmedical classic Huangdi Neijing(Canon of Medicine of the YellowEmperor). The book Zhen Jr.u JiaYi Jing, a classic on acupunctureand moxibustion was publishedsometime between A.D. 256 and260. It is the earliest completework on acupuncture and moxibus-tion so far discovered,

In our own times, treatment bycombined traditional Chinese andwestern medicine, training ofacupunctdrists and the publicationof books on acupuncture andmoxibustion won new encourage-ment in the liberated areas underthe leadership of the CommunistParty of China in the years beforeour revolution's victory in 1949.This was warmly welcomed by themasses. Since the founding of thepeople's republic, greater attentionhas been paid to these therapies,and they have been furtherdeveloped.

From 1949 to 1977 we have heldall kinds of training classes andpublished many special and otherpublications on the subject. Asmany as B,000 articles on acupune-

QIAN XINZHONG is Minister of PublicHealth and President of thc ChineseMedical Associotion.

ocToBER r.979

QrAN XTNZHONG

ture and moxibustion have ap-peared in newspapers and maga-zines. Starting from the severalhundred acupuncture points pre-viously in use, we have discoveredmany new ones through practicalexperience, and new methods havebeen created. These new pointsand techniques .have played a veryimportant role in extending theapplication of acupuncture andmoxibustion and in improvingtheir medical effect.

In the last 20 years or so th4oughcombining western and Chinesetraditional medicine great head-way has been made in our researchon acupuncture, moxibustion andacupuncture anesthesia. I shalldwell'only on the following fouraspects, drawing on material inpapers reieived for the nationwidesymposium in June 1979.

Clinical Observation

Clinically, acupuncture andmoxibustion have been used totreat about 300 different diseases,with good or very good results inabout 100. Meticulous observationof the use of acupuncture in 600cases of coronary heart diseaseshowed it to be effective in reliev-ing symptoms and in eliminatingangina pectoris. In 500 cases elec-trocardiograms taken before andafter the acupuncture therapy re-vealed an effectiveness rate of 53percent. Observations and ana-lyses made by some units by meansof electrocardiography, ultra-soundcardiography, measurement'of thecardiac output and cerebralhemadromography showed thatacupuncture could improvecoronarf circulation, left heartfunction and cerebral circulation.

Aeupuncture has been found, in645 cases, to havo a good effect onacute bacillary dysentery. Judg-ing by the clinical symptoms andsigns and the results of stool cul-ture, 92 percent of these patientswere cured within ten days. Fol-Iow-up of 268 cases six monthsafter treatment revealed relapseonly in 33, Through experiments,obsbrvations and analyses we con-cluded that the therapeutic effectof aeupuncture in acute bacillarydysentery is rq.latr:d ttt the increaseof body irnnrunity following acu-puncture needling.

Acupuneture is definitely usefulagainst gallstones. The total ex-pulsion rate in 522 cases treated byelectro-acupuncture and oral ad-ministration of magnesium sulfatewas 78 percent. In 69 percent ofthe cases stone expulsion beganone to five days after treatment.This procedure is readily acceptedby patients because with it sur-gery can be avoided in somecases.

Our doctors have also showninterest in correcting abnormalposition of the fetus by moxibus-tion. Moxibustion at Zhiyin pointduring the 29th-40th weeks ofpregnancy corrected 90 percent ofthe cases with various abnormalfetal positions. It is believed thatits mechanism may lic in increas- '

ing the activify of the uterus andmovements of the fetus. Acupunc-ture is also effective in inducinglabor and in the treatment ofcervical erosion.

Acupuncture has certain thera-peutic effect in various types ofparalysis, on diseases of the eye,ear, laryngopharynx, nose andmouth, and it has a comparativelygood anti-phlogistic and analgesiceffect.

The function of acupuncture andmoxibustion on the human bodyvaries. According to ancientChinese medical theory, they curediseases mainly by means of ad-justing the relationship betweenAang and Uin, promoting com-munication between the channelsand cOllaterals, regulating thevital energy (qi) and blood, pro-moting positive factors and elimi-nating negative ones. From thepoint of view of modern medicine,

47

Zhang Xiangtong, noted neurophysio-logist and head of the Shanghai Insti-tute of Physiolosy of 'the ChineseAcademy of Sciences, tests the pain:relieving qualities of acupuncture onanimals.

the principal action of acupunctureand moxibustion is to regulate thefunction of the body and increaseits resistance.

Acupuncture Anesthesia

Acupuncture anesthesia can becalled an invention by the massesof Chinese medical personnel onthe basis of acupuncture analgesiathrough countless cases in clinicalpractice. We now have a clearerknowledge of this procedure, itsindications and the principlesgoverning its clinical application.It may be said that its value as ananesthetic measure is alrea,Cy firm-ly established

There is wide scope for its clin-ical application. So far more thantwo million operations have beenperformed in China under suchanesthesia. The effect is compara-tively stable in 20 to 30 kinds ofordinary . operations. Generallyspeaking, it is thought to be moreeffective in head, neck and chestsurgery. It has also been widelyadopted in thyroid, maxillarysinus, glaucoma and abdominaltubal ligation operations. It isbeing used routinely with rather

48

satisfactory results by a few unitsin operations such as Caesareansection, partial removal of thestomach, total removal of thespleen and larynx and operationson the cervical vertebra throughthe anterior approach. Some hos-pitals make it their first choice forcraniocerebral surgery, removal ofthe prostate, the rneniscus (discsof fibro-cartilage in the knee joint)or of lobes of the lung. Since 1972it has been used in open heartsurgery undertaken under extra-corporeal circulation with satis-factory results.

In recent years, with a view toimproving the effect of acupunc-ture anesthesia, units throughoutthe country have worked in con-cert to study its principles andpractice. They are doing this bylooking for more effective points,improving methods of needling,the judicious use of adjuvants andmore accurate preoperative fore-casts so as to increase the adapta-bility of the patient to operation.Much headway has been 'madethrotigh repeated practice. Takelung and stomach operation forexample, the number of needlesrequired to effect anesthesia' inthese operations has graduallybeen decreased from several dozento as few as one or two today.

Acupuncture anesthesia has itsspecial advantages. First, patientsremain in a conscious statethroughout the operation. Thusthey usually can cooperate weIIwith the operating surgeon. Sec-ond., Iittle or no other anesthesiais needed, thereby preventing thepost-operative side-effects ofdrugs. Third, post-operative painis mild, and generally there are nosuch reactions as nausea andvomiting. Both food intake andphysical activity can be r-esumedearly. Anti-disease factors in thebody are apparantly mobilized andenhanced, thus hastening post-operative rehabilitation. Fourth,no sophisticated instruments areneeded and manipulation is simpleand easy to master. Of course,acupuncture anesthesia also hassome disadvantages, namely: in-complete analgesia, incornpletecontrol of visceral reaction, andunsatisfactory muscle relaiation.

However, these do not depreciateits value as a useful anestheticprocedure under specific condi-tions. It is a new addition to thearmory of anesthesiology.

Mechanisms

Popularization of acupuncture-moxibustion therapy and extensiveuse of acupuncture anesthesia have.Ied to nationwide coordinatedstudies of many different dis-ciplines on the mechanisms in-volved. Academically, there existtwo different theories, the neuro-humoral and the channel-collateraltheory. I'll say something aboutthe development of each of them.

Action of acupuncture on thebody: In the light of indicationsfor acupuncture therapy revealedthus far, it is presumed that acu-puncture acts in two ways, i.e. toregulate the functions of lhevarious systems of the body and tostrengthen its resistance to disease.A large amount of experimentalwork on animals shows that need-ling certain points may produceobvious regulating action on thefunction of the respiratory, di-gestive, circulatory, urinary, en-docrine, nervous and energymetabolism systems. As shown bYthe results of experiments on dogs,needling the Nei,guan, Renzhong,Chengjiang and other points maygreatly increase the stability of theblood pressure regulating system.

Laboratory observation showedthat acupuncture therapy has amarked effect on enhancing theimmunological functions of humanblood ce1ls. Animal experimentsshowed that moxibustion can in-crease the activity of the giantphagocytes and the antibody titerin the blood. Some laboratoriesreported that after needling thecontent of sulfohy'dryl in the tis-sues, which is closely relate,C tothe defensive mechanism, wasincreased.

Medical researchers have carriedout a series of exleriments prob-ing the analgesic action of acu-puncture on humans and animals.In recent years more rapid ad-vances have been made in thestudy of this action and itsmechanism. Research on nervousphysiological principles of anal-

CIIINA BECONSTRUCTS

gesic action of acupuncture hasbeen carried out in many of ourmodern electro-physiological labo-ratories with good results.

In recent years discovery of anendogenous morphine-Iike sub-stance has stimulated research andthe assumption of the presence ofan intrinsic anti-pain mechanismin the nervous system. The rela-tionship between this endogenousmorphine-like substance and theanalgesia resulting from acupunc-ture has aroused much interestamong scientific workers. In a

short period of two to three yearsour scientists have succeeded inworking out methods for isolation,extraction and determination ofthis substance, as well as in syn-thesizing artificially the high-ly active enkephalin and itsderivatives.

The role played by other factorsin acupuncture analgesia, includ-ing the psychological factor, isunder active research.

To sum up, we have a generalpicture of the mechanism of acu-puncture analgesia. Acupunctureanalgesia is a complicated dynamicprocess in which under stimulationof needling a series of changesoccur, extending from the peri-phery to various levels of thecentral nervous system and involv-ing many factors such as thenerves and the body fluids, includ-ing the causation and relief ofpain. Many problems, of course,remain to be elucidated.

Channels and Collaterals

The theory of channels and col-laterals forms the theoretical ba-sis for acupuncture-moxibustiontherapy. In recent years the studyof the channel-collateral theoryhas been c.entered on: the pheno-menon of sensation transmissionalong the channels; the action ofneedling on the pathway of trans-mission; the relation between thevisceral organs and the body sur-face; and the morphologic basis ofthe channels and collaterals.

When stimulation is applied tothe points of the channels, a sensa-tion of soreness, numbness, disten-sion and burning is transmittedalong the course of the channels

ocToBER r97e

and collaterals. This phenomenonis called "sensation propagationalong the channels." Since 1972units in more than 20 provinces,municipalities and autonomous re-gions have carried out a series ofinvestigations into this phenome-non. It has been found that itappears in people of various na-tionalities, of all age groups. inboth sexes and in different condi-tions of health. When the sensa-tion reaches a corresponding organ,it gives rise to change in functionof that organ. When it is trans-mitted to the diseased region, thesymptoms often improve. How-ever, the nature of sensation trans-mission along the course of thechannels is still obscure.

The action of acupuncture onthe transmission pathway: Num-erous laboratory studies showthat when the involved factor, thenerve or the body fluid, is blocked,destroyed or removed, the effectof acupuncture become cor-respondingly weakened or disap-pears entirely, This confirms thepresumption that acupuncturemainly acts through the nerves andbody fluids. However, the pos-sibility of participation of somefactors other than these is sug-

gested by some laboratory studiesand this needs further investiga-tion.

Our scientific workers havemade extensive anatomical andhistological studies of the acupunc-ture points on cadavers. Throughthese investigations they found theexistence of a definite relation-ship between the points and theIines connecting them with theperipheral nerves and bloodvessels.

In the past two decades we havemade considerable progress in ourscientific study of acupuncture,moxibustion and acupunctureanesthesia. However, the objectiveworld is still developing and inan'srecognition of it never comes toan end. We are confident that thestudies will deepen. The Chinesescientists engaged are now sum-ming up their experience over thepast 20 years. They are strengthen-ing international exchanges in thisfield to push forward this researchand the combination of Chineseand western medicine as a whole.Our ultimate goal is to establisha new system of medicine andpharmacology for China and speedup modernization of our medical

Modern equipmeat is used to do research into the channel-'collateral theory and the theory of acupuneture anesthesiaat the Anhui Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

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A slope of purirle rhododendrons btends with the mist onmystic Mt. Emei.

THE rhododendron is known inr China as the cuckoo flower.

Why cuckoo? Legend has it thatin the ancient time Wang Di, aking of Shu (today's Sichuan prov-ince) well-regarded by the peoplefor his efforts to develop agricul-ture, was driven from his throneby a usurper and had to flee forhis life to a distant state. Heyearned for his homeland andwhen he died his soul became ,acuckoo which every spring whenthe flowers began to bloom pouredout its lament. One day its heartburst with grief, the blood stain-ing the flowers red. Thus the namecuckoo flower.

Known for its beauty and grace,the rhododendron grows in Chinain 400 varieties. Those on MountEmei are the most famous.

Chen Zhenge

over the surrounding plains, it hasa difference in temperature of a,dozen degrees between foot andsummit. Hence it is often shroudedin clouds and mist. This, withplentiful rainfall, accounts for thelushness and variety ilf its plants.

The mountain is carpeted withrhododendrons of different kindsblooming in succession in gorgeoushues through spring and summer.

Botanists have counted 23 varie-ties of rhododendron that growhere. On the iower slopes between500 and 1,000 meters above sealevel, are the azalea (Rh. Simsii,Planchon) and the Iongstamen rho-dodendron (Rh. Stanineum Fr.).The formbr blossoms , in earlyspring and late fall, its flowersflame-red. The latter blooms inApril in the forests. An extra-ordinarily long stamen rising outof white, fragrant petals makesthe species unique.

On the middle levels of themountain, 1,000-2,000 meters abovesea level, nine other varieties arefound. Among them are the silver-leaf rhododendron (Rh. Arggro-phgllum Fr.), growing amongshrubs and rocks and putting forthwhite bell-like flowers in themonth of May; Rh. Ririei Hemsley

et Wi,lson, a bush with purPleflowers blooming in March justwhen the snow begins to melt; andalso the mandarin rhododendron(Rh, Discolor Fr.), and the canaryrhododendron (Rh, Lutescens),

DHODODENDRON Iorests growft much higher, 2,000-2,500meters above sea level on thesouthern face, Here one findsthe queen of the rhododendronworld, the bigleaf rhododendron(Rh. Calophtum Fr.). It is a tree.four to five meters high bearingblossoms of up to three dozensmall lavender-pink flowersclustered together in a large anddazzlingly beautiful ball. Its com-panions are the hairystalk rho-dodendron (Rh. PachAgriehum Fr.)and scarletball rhododendron (Rh'Strigillosum). AII burst into flowerin May in colors ranging from redand white to lavender.

One of the most exotic sights isat the Elephant Bathing Pool andon Emei's Seven-mile SioPe. Herethe Rh. Dendrocharis Fr., a smallparasitic plant with tiny branchesand dainty leaves Presents rose-red flowers in May. From Seven-mile Slope up to the summit, atan altitude of about 3,000 meters,are two rhododendron beauties -the Faber rhododendron withwhite flowers and large calYxesand the puckerleaf with Pink,small-calyxed blossoms. Theseoften grow on sheer preciPices andhave winding trunks that resemblecurling dragons. Between Thou-sand-Buddha Peak and Ten-thousand-Buddha Peak, both onthe southwestern sloPe near thesummit, three other varieties growinterspersed among stretches ofglossyleaf chinacane. All threebloom in June, one with PurPIeflowers and the others with lightyellow, funnel-shaped flowers andbig white ones.

People often doubt that thevarieties of rhododendron onMount Emei number Only 23, as

botanists claim. Standing on themountain and looking down into

/

OUNT EMEI rises abruptlyfrom a plain in subtropical

southwesterly Si,chuan to an alti-tude of 3,099 meters above sealevel. Sheer cliffs and thrustingpeaks clad in dense woods make.itone of China's famed scenic areas.The many monastbries and histori-cal sites on the mountain testify toits special meaning to Chinese'Buddhism. Towering 2,500 meters

50 CIIINA RECONSTBUCTS

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Bigleaf rhododenilron

Williams rhododendron

Puekerleaf rhodoilentlron

Canary rhotlodenclron

the vaileys, one sees rhododendronshrubs and trees in a thousandshapes flaunting a multitude oIcolor"s beside crystal springs orunder overhanging rocks. Sodazz\ng is the scene that thenun-lb*i' of varieties seems to havemuitiplied.

From March to July the rhodo-dendrons, beginning to bloom atthe foot of the mountain, spreadgradually toward the summit in aspectacle unparalleled in China.

The Emei rhododendrons havebeen acclaimed through the agesin poetry and prose. After a tripto the mountain, the Song dynasty(960-1279) rvriter Fan Chengdawrote: "White and red are therhododendrons. They bloom inspring and summer, but only onthis mountain. They greet you atthe foot of the mountain. Higherup they are everywhere to beseen."

Having viewed the rhododen-drons on Emei, an l8th centurytraveler marveled, "When thetlowers are at their best, themountain seems to be decked outin colorful silk balls. The treesare about seven chi (over 2 meters)high, and the leaves deep green.The flowers blossom at the tips ofthe branches, a dozen clustering inone calyx. Red, pink and white,they look like hibiscus. The treesdie if transplanted outside themountain, because they are ac-customed to cold weather and aresacred plants not for the apprecia-tion of mortals." Local Buddhistsrefer to.them as their sara trees*."Saras grow only around theBuddha,'i they say. ,'Likll rosyclouds these trees bloom all overEmei. Although the Buddha doesnot live here all year round, seeingthe flowers is equal to seeing theBuddha-"

Many measures have been takento protect the rhododendrons ofEmei. Chinese botanists havemade collections of specimens.Many are displayed in the Bao GuoTemple at the foot of the mountain.

Part of Mt. Emei is now acces-sible to tourists, and pathways andaccommodations are being built. !r An Indian tree (Cyathea spinulosa)intimately associated with Buddhism.

Modernizotion

(Continued from p. 7)

Years cf high popuiation grou,th,are rcaciring the age of marriage.In 1978, the population growthw'as 12 per thousand. This year'seftort is to bring it down to 10 forall except the national minoritieswho live in vast but under-populated parts of the country.

If all these things can be donein the current three years, China'seconomy will assume a new look,And by 1981, when her Sixth Five)'ear Flan begins, big ne',r' strrdescan be taken in modernization.

Democracy and Legal System

Democratic principies and im-portant safeguards of citizens'rights rvere embodied in legislationby the People's Congress, i,hichincluded some constitutionalamendments and several mhjor'laws.

The organization of local peo-ple's congresses and people's gov-ernments (which for some yearshad been replaced by revolution-ary committees but are now re-instituted) was redef ined. Con-gresses at county level will hence-forth be elected by direct popularvote, not indirectly as before. Acandidate can be nominated byany voter with three seconders.No member of any people's con-gress at or above the county levelcan be arrested or tried withoutthe consent of its standing com-mittee. A people's congress (or itsstanding committee) can elect orappoint, and has the power toremove members of the people'sgovernment at its own level.

The Criminal Law and Law of,,

Criminal Procedure adopted at theCongress will come into force onJanuary 1, 1980. It stresses thatall men are equal before the law,and no one has the privilege ofbeing beyond or above it. It pro-tects the right of person and de-mocratic and other rightb of

citizens against illegai infririgementby any person or institution. Im-prisonment without legal sanction,frame-ups on f alse charges andextortion of confession throughtorture are strictly prohibited. Alithese abuses, promoted by LinBiao and the gang of four, are de-clared illegal and punishable. Theassembling of a crowd to "beat,smash and loot," rife in their day,is also forbidden and punishableby law.

There is a clear division offunction between public securityorgans, which are empowered tomake provisional arrests andcriminal investigations, procura-torates which must approve allarrests and initiate prosecutions,and the courts which try of{endersand pass sentences, They bothcomplement and check on eachother'. Judiciary organs are givenindependence in their work.

In order to guard against misuseof serious charges, such as occllr-red in recent vears. a strict limitis placed on prosecutions forcounter-revolutionary offences,which can only be for' "acts under-mining the People's Republic ofChina with the aim of overthrow-ing the political power of the dic-tatorship of the proletariat and thesocialist system."

Every accused person is entitledto legal defense (the training anduse of lawyers is resumed). Thesystem of people's assessors(jurors) is to be strengthened. Witha very few exceptions, as in cases

involving state secrets, serioussexual offences, or offences byminors, all trials must be public.

Being drafted are a Civil Law,Law of Civil Procedure, new Mar'-riage Law. Family Planning Law,Factory Law, Labor Law, ContractLaw, Energy Law and Law of En-vironmental Protection.

In short, the Congress marks a

great advance in stabilitY, unitY,efficacy and democracy in the firslsteps of the new Long March. @

ocToBDn 1979 53

Chinese History-)(lll

THE AREA under Tang dynasty rule (618-907)I extended from the sea on the east to beyond

Lake Balkhash in the west, and from the OuterKhingan Mountains north of the Heilong River to theSouth China Sea Islands. Tang culture was graduallycarried to its outermost reaches inhabited by peoplesof many nationalities. Ties between peoples werestrengthened and various cultures mingled to createa richer, varied whole. A thriving economy andculture and efficient international communicationsbrought China's relations with other countries to newheights.

Turks in the Northwest

From the third to sixth centuries from the timeof the Three Kingdoms period onward, the peoples

Carving on stone by a Turkic people who inhabited areas inthe north and west of China dating from Tang times pic-tures scenes of nomatlic life.

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JIAO JIAN

of the "Western Regions" (covering today's Xinjiangand some areas to the west) had maintained closecontacts with the Han people in other parts ofChina. By the middle of' the sixth century theTurks, then a nomadic people living around the AltaiMountains had grown strong and brought undertheir control a vast area from the Khingan Mountains .

to the Caspian Sea. By the end of the century theyhad split into Eastern and Western Turks.

Durirrg the early Tang period the chiefs of theEastern Turks frequently ted them to make foraystoward the south. They often seized captives whomthey enslaved. On one occasion 100,000 EasternTurk horsemen reached the northern bank of theWei River near Changan. In 629 Tang Emperor TaiZong sent more than 100,000 troops under General

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Early-Tang certificate ap-pointing the Turk Fandedaas official in the newly-established Suiye militarYdistrict south of LakeBalkhash.

CHINA RECONSTRUCTS

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54

Li Jing against the Eastern Turks. The followingyear the Tang army routed them at their head-quarters in the Yinshan Mountains (in today,s InnerMongolia). In the territory once overrun by theEastern Turks Emperor Tai Zong set up prefecturaladministrations and appointed a Turk noble as mili-tary governor.

Then the Western Turk khan sent envoys toChangan on friendly terms.

Military commands were set up in certainareas and later administrations. One was Anxiestablished in 640 in the lands south of the TianshanMountains, including the Pamir Mountains, withheadquarters at what is today's Turpan in Xinjiang.The other was Beiting set up in ?02 by Empress WuZe Tian* north of the Tianshans and including theAltai Mountains and the area west of Lake Balkhashwith headquarters at what is today's Ji,msar inXinjiang.

Suiye, south of Lake Balkhash, one of the fourmilitary districts under the Anxi administration (theother three were today's Kuqa, Hotan and Kashi -the latter two also known as Khotan and Kashgar),was particularly important in consolidating defencesin the border area and protecting the overland routeconnecting China with the west. Scenes of life inthis region are vividly described in the works of theTang poet Cen Can who served in the army there.

Into both these areas the Tang government in-troduced a system under which soldiers wereencouraged to reclaim land and grow crops. Peopleof the Han nationality went to these regions withadvanced farming techniques which helped promoteagricultural production. The peoples of these regionswent to the capital Changan to study and took backHan classics such as The Analects of Confucius whichcame to be used as textbooks in the schools. Manymusicians and painters from the far regions moved tothe Han areas and found their artistry highlyregarded.

Huairen Khan of the Ouigours

In the early Tang period the Ouigours, nomadsalong the Selenga River, were subject to theEastern Turks. After Tang conquered the EasternTurks, the Ouigours gradually extended their powersouthwards and came into more contact with Tang.By 744 their leader Guolbelga had defeated manyother tribes and controlled a huge expanse ofterritory from the Heilong River in the east to thesteppes below the Altai Mountains in the west. Hewas given the title of Huairen Khan by the Tang

tWu Ze Tian was a young concubine of Emperor Tai Zong.After he died she became a nun in a temple. Emperor GaoZong summoned her ,back to the court and later promotedher to be his wife, In 960 at the age of 66.she proclaimedherself empress, the only woman in Chinese history to ruleas sdvereign in her own right.

ocIoBER 1979

emperor. By the middle of the 9th century Ouigourpower had disintegrated and most of the Ouigourshad moved westward to Gansu and Xinjilrng. Theyexchangd horses, furs and hides for the silk dnd teaof the Hans. The workd of the famous Tang poetswere well known among the Ouigours. Kakmanl,an Ouigour poet, wrote in the Han language.

Mohes in the Northeast

Early in the 7th century the valleys of theHeilong, Songhua and Wusuli rivers in the far northwere inhabited by the Mohe people. They lived indugout-shelters in the winter and herded pigs in thesummer. In 681 the Heishui, one of the two mainbranches of the Mohes who lived along the lower Hei-long River, began to pay tribute to the Tang courtand increase political ties with it. ln 722 the Tanggovernment appointed the Heishui leader magistrateof Boli district (at the junction of the Heilong andWusuli rivers). A few years later a fairly completeadministration existed in the Heilong River valleywith Heishui leaders as - military governor anddistrict magistrates.

In the area to the south, the other large tribe ofthe Mohe people, the Sumos, submitted to Tangauthority early in the dynasty. By the end of the7th century the Sumo leader Dazuorong had broughtmost other Mohe tribes under his rule. The areabecame the Bohai principality under Tang andEmperor Xuan Zong conferred on him the title ofprince. Henceforth the Sumo tribe became knownas the Bohai.

There were about 100,000 households in the Bohairegion. They grew'rice, millet, ,wheat and beans,made wine, wove cotton and silk cloth and producedfine pottery vessels. People were sent to Changanto study "ancient and present systems" and broughtback with them books in the Han language. Theeconomy and culture in the area were developed,nearly on a par with that elsewhere in China. Sablefurs, sealskins, falcons, ginseng, musk, horses andcopper were sold to other areas.

Nanzhaos in the South

In Yunnan in the far south, prefectural andcounty administrations under the central governmenthad existed from as early as Western Han times.During the early Tang period the tribes living aroundErhai Lake in northwestern Yunnan including theancestors of today's Yi and Bai natignalities wereamalgamated into six zhao. The southernmost werethe Nanzhao. In 738 Emperor Tang Xuan Zong madethe Nanzhao chieftain Piloko Prince of Yunnan. Withpermission from the Tang emperor, Piloko and hisson Kolofeng conquered the other tribes. TheNanzhao were in the stage of slave society. Slavesworked in the fields under overseers sent by nobles,officials and slaveowners, and rr.Iost of their produce

55

?::

uStatues of Songtsan Gambo (lett) and princessll'en Cheng preserved in Tibet's Potala Palace,

went to their masters. Cultural influences f romother parts of China hastened the economic andculturai development of the Nanzhao. Many artisansfrom Chengdu (in today's Sichuan province) wentthere and helped bring the quality of silk fabricsthere to a par with Sichuan's products. Markedachievements were also made in architecture and art.Three pagodas from this period still stand in the1,O0O-year-old Chong Sheng Temp1e near Erhai Lake.

The Tibetans

The ancestors of the modern Tibeians, the Tubopeople, had been living on the Qinghai-Tibet plateausince much earlier times. Some were farmers raisingqingke (highland barley), wheat, buckwheat and peas,some were nomadic herders. Their domestic animalsincluded yaks, cattle, horses, pigs and dromedaries.

The Tubos wore clothes made of felt and livedin felt tents. The Qinghai-Tibet plateau was rich ingold, silver, copper, iron and tin and the Tubos werehighly skilled in making vessels of goid, silver andbronze. They also made excellent iron armor andweapons.

Early in the ?th century Songtsan Gambo, theTubo ruler, brought the scattered tribes of theQinghai-Tibet plateau under one rule with Lhasa asits political center. Wanting to cement his relationswith the Tang rulers, several times he requested thehand of a Han princess in marriage. So in 641 TangEmperor Tai Zong sent Princess Wen Cheng to be hisbride. An admirer of Tang culture, Songtsan Gambobuilt for her mansions in Tang style. The princessbrought with her vegetable seeds, fine handicraft arti-cles and books on medicine and production tech-niques. Tang artisans came bringing the stone mill,the arts of distilling and paper and ink-making andsilkworm raising.

56

Ink sticks, a favorite import fromKorea shown with a Chinese inkstick (risht)"

Later Tang Emperor Zhong Zong gave PrincessJin Cheng in marriage to the Tibetan ruler ChideZutsan and the latter wrote the emperor saying thatthe Tibetan and Tang governments had become "har-monious as one family." In 821 the Tibetans con-cluded an alliance with Tang, stipulating that oneparty shotrld aid the other in adversity and thatneither should attack or plunder the other. A stonetablet recording this alliance still stands before theJokhang Temple in Lhasa. These close contacts wereto develop, by the 13th century, into the administra-tive unification of Tibet into the multi-nationalChinese state.

Exchange with Other Countries:Korea and Japan

The close relations that existed between Chinaand Korea became still closer in Tang times. Duringthe early part of the period the Korean peninsula wasdivided into three states - Kokuli, Silla and Paikche.Musicians from Kokuli and Paikche came to Changanand were well received. Kokuii music was includedin Tang players' repertoires. In the latter part of the?th century Silla brought the peninsula under onerule and sent many students to Changan to study Chi-nese politics, history, philosophy, astronomy, calendarscience and medicine. Tang poetry was very popularamong those from Silla. Through contact with Chi-nese artisans its weavers began making exquisitebrocades with cloud and other designs.

Trade between China and Korea flourished inTang times. Chinese silk, tea, porcelain, medicineand books exchanged for cattle, horses, hemp, cotton

CHINA RECONSTRUCTE

cloth, paper, writing brushe-s, ink and folding fansfrom the Korean peninsula. These helped enrich theeconomic and cultural life of both countries.

Japan had begun to send envoys to China as earlyas the Han dynasty. As many as 13 or 14 missionswere sent to China during the Tang dynasty. Theyincluded officials and students, and the largest had600 members. Students from Japan studied Chinesephilosophy, history, the political system, literature,art and handicrafts. Some remained for 20 to 40years.

One who came from Japan to study was AbenoNakamaro, who was known in China by the nameChao Heng, He excelled at poetry in the Han lan-guage and won the admiration and friendship of thegreat Tang poets Li Bo and Wang Wei. When Chaowas about to return to Japan, Wang Wei wrote a fare-well poem.

He became the subject of another poem .,The

Poet Mourns His Japanese Friend', by Li Bo. It wascomposed in deep grief by the Tang poet when it wasfalsely rumored that Chao had died in a storm at sea.It stands today as a moving record of a friendshipbetween nationals of the two countries.

The Tang culture which the students took backexerted great influence on Japanese culture. TheJapanese took up the Tang system of land distributionand taxation. The ancient Japanese capital Kyoto wasmodeled on Changan. The radicals of the Han charac-ters were utilized to create a script for the Japaneselanguage. Some Tang customs in food and dress andother ways of life have been preserved in Japandown to the present day.

The Monk Xuan Zang

India and China exchanged envoys during thereign of Emperor Tai Zong (626-649). Indian medi_cine, astronomy, calendar science, music and handi_crafts were introduced into China, and the Chineseclassics and the art of making paper to India. Themonk Xuan Zang (Hsuan Tsang) left from Changanin 629 and traveled via Xinjiang and over the pamirMountains to Indi.a to get the Buddhist religibus.writ_ings from their source. He visited the birthplace ofSakyamuni in Nepal and many monasteries in Inclia.While there he learned many languages and made awide study of the Buddhist scriptures. In 64i hebrought more than 600 religious works back toChangan. .He spent the next 20 years translating1,300 volumes of them. These translations haveproven invaluable for researchers on Buddhism andIndian culture, since many of the originals in Indiawgre lost. Xuan Zang and his disciples wrote a de_tailed account of the trip, entitled Records of WesternTrauels, It noted the mountains and rivers, localproducts, customs and habits, religious beliefs andlegends of the 130 states he visited and particularlythose of India.

ocToBEB 1979

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The three pagodas in the 1000-year-old Chongsheng- Templebuilt in yunnan province by the Nanzhaos during the Tangperiod.

Xuan Zang's travels became the theme of novelswritten between the 13th and 17th centuries. Mostpopular is Pi,Lgrimage to the lVest by Wu Chengen(c. 1500 - c. 1582) which features the Monkey KingSun Wukong. It is well known in nearly every house-hold in China.

Persia, Arabia, Byzantium

Closer relations developed with Persia, Arabiaand Byzantium, with many embassies from themvisiting China. In the hundred-some years from thereigns of Emperor Gao Zong to Emperor De Zong(mid-7th to early 9th centuries) more than 30 em-bassies came to China from Arabia.

Merchants, students, artists and religious per-sonnel from Persia and Arabia could be found inalmost every big city of Tang times. Throughout mostof the period the Tang rulers followed a policy oftolerance toward their reiigious beliefs and customs,Arabs built the first mosque in China in Guangzhouduring this time. Students from many countriesstudied in schools in Changan, and artists from abroadtaught music, dancing and acrobatics there.

The Tang government encouraged merchantsfrom abroad to come to trade in China. Tang localofficials were prohibited from levying extra taxes onthem. Some came and went, but others settled inand carried on long-term trading in silk and jewels.Thousands of Persian merchants resided in Changanand Yangzhou. Some of them operated small shopsselling grapewine and home-baked cakes.

Chinese silks, handicraft products and culturalobjects traveled to western Asia and Europe in largequantities via the Old Silk Road. Through Arabiathe Chinese arts of papermaking, silk weaving andhandicrafts found their way to many countries in

E57

Africa and Europe.

Treasures from Abroad Prized in $ui-Tang Times

rT\HE flow of silks westwardI over the OId Silk Road is wellknown, but what flowed along iteastward to China from centraland western Asia? One thing ofrvhich there is considerablematerial evidence is the Pdssageof luxury goods during the Sui(581-618) and Tang (618-907) dY-nasties. Jewelry and vessels of

found in 1957 at Xi'an in a tombdated 608 belonging to the grand-daughter of a Princess. Made incharacteristically west Asian style,it is a string of 28 finelY-workedgold beads with a clasP made of a

blue stone with the design of a big-horned deer. The large Pieces infront are of gold, jade and Preciousstones. 'In this tomb were also

YI SHUI

found a gold stem-cuP and one ofsilver in the stYle of the PersianSassanian dynastY, a Sassaniansilver coin from the reign of KingPeroz (459-484) and five glass

vessels.

Chinese and Persian Elements

Imitations of gold and silvervessels that began to aPPear on themarket show Sassanian influenceand some might have been madeby Persian .handicraf tsmen inChina. GenerallY sPeaking, theChinese copies resemble the Per-sian prototypes in shaPe, but thedecoration is usually in typicallyTang Chinese style. An examPleare three octagonal stem-cuPs ofsilver chased with gold unearthedin 19?0 at Hejia village near Xi'anon the site of the mansion ofPrince Bin, a cousin of Tang Em-peror Xuan Zong. The shaPe, thering handle with thumbPiece ontop and the "pearled" edge andfoot are Sassanian. So is designin relief on one of the cuPs of the

The camel-and-tender motif inside a typically Persian me-dallion pattern on silk found at Turpan in Xinjia.ng bears theChinese characters "foreign king."

gold and silver were some of themain items, and they were muchsought after by the uPPer strataof Chinese society. So much indemand were theY that imitationsof them were produced bY artisansin China.

Changan (present-day Xi'an inShaanxi province), caPital duringthese dynasties, became the centerof economic and cultural inter-course for the Asian PeoPIesand such goods, both imPorts andcopies, were sold in its shoPs., Oneof the shops excavated on the siteof the old western market YieldedIarge quantities of ornaments setwith pearls and agates and madeof crystal, and some of gold.

An exquisite gold necklaceevidently from west Asia was

Silver ewer from Persia and the heaal ol the man at its top.

YI SHUI is a researcher at the Insti-tute of Archeology of the'Academy ofSocial Sciences.

58

head of a west Asian man withdeep-set eyes and a high nose.

But the figures of dancers andmusicians on each of the eightsides are typically Chinese in bothcostume and facial features. An-other silver stem-cup is Sassanianin shape but the bodY is decoratedwith a Tang hunting scene. Among

CHINA EECONSTRUCTS

the 270 silver and gold vesselsfound there, 6ome are obviouslyimitations.

Excavated with these were aSassanian silver coin of KingChosroes II (590-628) and a Byzan-tine gold coin bearing the likenessof Heraclius (610-641). They seemto have been preserved astreasures.

Sassanian Relics

Quite a number of silver coinshave been discovered in tombs inthe Turpan oasis in Xinjiang onthe Old Silk Road. Apparentlysome special power was attributedto them; many of them were foundin the mouths of the dead. Mostnumerous are those minted byShapur II (310-379) and ArdashirII (379-383) and Chosroes II. By-zantine gold coins or their imita-tions were also found there.

Other Sassanian-style silver ves-sels were found in 1975 in anancient tom6 in Inner Mongolia'sAohan banner. They include anewer, ell oval-shaped cup and adish with an animal design ham-mered in from the back. Theewer is particularly nbteworthy forthe head of a mustached man atthe point where the handle joinsthe mouth. This and the "pearled"edge around the base make it safeto identify as an import fromPersia.

Eastward along the Old SilkRoad also came a number ofaristocrats of the Sassanian dy-nasty seeking refuge in China afterits downfall. In 1955 the tomb-stone of a woman named Ma wasunearthed in Xi'an. Writing inboth Chinese and the PersianPahlavi script states that she wasthe wife of a Zoroastrian namedSuren, the descendant of one ofthese aristocrats. As a monumentit is a worthy representative ofSassanian traditional culture, eventhough it was put up much laterin 874 at the time of her death.This is the first stone engravedwith Pahlavi cursive script to bediscovered in China.

Designs for Weaving

Persian designs were brought toChina so that Chinese weavers

OCTOBEf,, 1979

could use them in manufacturingsilks for export to Persia and thusbecame part of China's culture too.Quite a few examples of brocadeswith Persian designs have beenfound at stops along the Old SilkRoad, particularly at Astana in theTurpan oasis. These include thetypically Sassanian medalliondesign with a "pearled" borderand inside two birds facing ,each

other. Motifs inside other medal-lion patterns include riders, eagles,deer and a boar's head. The ridershave Persian features and. the rib-bons over their shoulders areexactly the same as those on thecrown of a king depicted on a

Sassanian silver dish and silvercoins. The most interesting medal-lion designs featirre motifs ofcamels and their tenders. Eachset of figures includes the Chinesecharacters for "foreign king."

Arabian and Japanese Coins

Three Arabian gold coins wereunearthed in a late-Tang tomb atXi'an. Inscriptions in Kufic scriptquote from the Koran and note thedate of minting, the earliest ?02,the latest 746 or 747. These arethe earliest coins from an Islamiccountry found in China, and thiswas the first time gold coins ofthe Arabian Omayyad dynasty hadbeen found here.

Among the finds in Prince Bin'smansion at Hejia village were fiveWakokaichin silver coins from thetime of Emperor Genmei of theNara dynasty in Japan, relics ofrelations with that country. E

freasured coins: Japanese Wakokaichinsilver coin (top), three Arabian Omay-yad dynasiy gold coins, and front andback of a Byzantine gold coin and aPersian silver coin (bottom), all foundnear Xi'an"

Chinese copy of Persian silver stem-cup bears Persian-style handle and "pearled"edge and foot, but figure of Tang dancer on side.

59

[ierce or fanciful,

XIAO QING and WEN'ZHEN

f\ HINESE folk toys are works\-t of art in their clever designand fine craftsmanship. Loved byadults as well as children, manyof them reflect the people's desirefor a happy and peaceful life andtheir confidence that all evils canbe defeated.

The city of Wuxi in Jiangsuprovince is famous for its toys ofclay. The clay cats look more liketigers than house peis. Mice area constant threat to the silkwormsraised in this part of China so allthe farmers keep cats. Perhapsthe toy cats personify the fiercealertness the people hope for intheir real cats.

In contrast, other toys are fanci-ful, even mischievous ir"r appear-ance. Among them are the paper-mache lions made in Fengxiangcounty, Shaanxi province, stuffedtigers with embroidered faces fromShanxi province and the lions andtigers made in Weifang in Shan-dong province. A brightly-coloredlion may sport a red flower oneither ear. A tiger may wear amask. A lion made of pieces ofsilk may be cavorting with a ball.The craftsmen purposely changefierce animals into comic ones toplease the children. A favorite isa lion with a head greatly largerthan its body.

The stuffed tiger with a head ateach end from Shandong provinceusually serves as a pillow for achild. In the countryside of northChina it was once believed that ifa child slept such a pillow inspring he would not get iII allyear.

A TOY often serves a practicalfLpurpose. Take the straw shoesthe peasants in Henan provincemake for their small children.Since babies like to take their

60

shoes off, the shoes become aninteresting plaything. The sole isof wood and the upper sturdilywoven of straw. The big red eyesseem to be keeping an eye on theroad for the tiny wearer.

The hedgehog, beetle and moirsefrom Shandong province can alsoserve as pincushions. The hedge-hog's quills are imaginatively in-dicated by white sawtooth stripspasted on the black body.

Some of the toys are figuresfrom legends. A palm fiber dragonis made in Hunan province. TheIegendary dragon has the head ofa bull, horns of a deer, eyes of aprawn, mouth of a donkey, beardof a human being, ears of a pig,body of a serpent, feet of aphoenix and scales of a fish. Itcan grasp, scratch, kick and stamp,It can rise to the sky to make rain

and wind and dive into the sea tostir up turbulent waves. The toYdragon, however, is a symbol oibenevolent power that helps peoplefight off disasters.

The Qilin, another mYthicalanimal with the body of a deer, thetail of a bull, a single horn andscales all over its body, is a sYmbolfor good luck. Toys in this formare frequent gifts at birthdays orweddings.

CIay figurines made in Shaanxiprovince portray characters fromlocal operas. They are stronglYlocal in shape and color.

Many toys reflect the familiarthings in daily life. Tht claYdonkey made in Shanxi, forexample, looks like one, from a

folk story illustration, ready tocarry a young bride to visit her

ECHINA NECONSTRUCTS

mother.

Clay baby with fish (tlebei)

Embroitlered cloth iiger (Shanxi)

Lion (paper-rnache, Shaanxi)

Clay cats (Jiangsu)

Dragon (coir palm fiber, Hunan)

Clay theatrical figures (Shaanxi)

Straw shoes (trIenan)

CLOTH FOLK TOYSFROM SHANDONG

Tiny tigers

lledgehog

Mandarin duc\

THE KAZAK herdsmen in Chi-I na's far western Xinjiang calltheir heroes "mountain eagles." InFive-tree commune in Xinjiang'sMori county they call Jumjuma, a12-year-old boy, a young mountaineagle.

Jumjuma's father is a herdsmanin the commune. One morning lastDecember his family was drivingthe sheep to a winter paddock 15ki-lometers away. His parents rodeahead in the cart loaded with theiryurt (felt tent) and other things.Jumjuma's elder brother, whousually herded the flock from therear, had a boil on his leg andcould not help that day. So theirfather let Jumjuma bring up therear. The boy mounted a cameland set off with a crack of hiswhip.

fVfEATHER on the Gebi desertW changes quickly. Without

warnir,g snow began to faII and astrong northwest wind blew up.Jumjuma could hardly see the way.Suddenly a frozen canal blockedthe way of the flock. He jumpeddown, dragged the bellwetheracross first, and then went backfor the others. The sheep couldn'tclimb the high bank against theheavy snow and strong wind soJumjuma pushed them up one byone. Sweat streamed down hisface, but he didn't care. By thetime he had the sheep all acrosshe couldn't see his parents aheadany more.

The blizzard got worse. Theflock was blown toward the east.What should he do? He knew thatthe farther they went toward theeast, the farther they wodd getfrom his father. He wanted to savethe commune's sheep so he ranafter the flock.

When the father found that hisson was not following him he be-

ocIoBER le70

came worried. He quickly drovethe cart to the new place and wentback to look for him. When heheard the news, Sabit, head of thecommune production team, wentout with a doctor and severalherdsmen to search for theboy. It was already dark. Thepeople gazed worriedly into theblizzard. Where was Jumjuma?

By that time the boy had beenracing after the flock against thedriving snow for a whole day,hungry, cold and dog-tired. Hehad a single thought in his mind:Keep the sheep safe.

rfrHAT night the temperature onI- the Gebi desert dropped to 30"

below zero. In the cold and dark-ness the frightened sheep began toscatter. The boy was kept busydriving this one, then that one,back to the f]ock. The camel wastoo tired to move so Jumjuma ranafter the sheep on foot with a whipin his hand, staggering andstumbling in the snow. Finally hemanaged to get all 288 sheeptogether again.

It was late in the night beforethe flock quieted down. The boywas too tired even to hold thewhip. He collapsed onto the snow,hardly able to keep his eyes open.

"Don't go to sleep," he told him-self, "you might freeze to death."

But what about the sheep? Hemade an effort to open his eyesand stand up. He took up thecamel's rein and led it on patrolaround the flock.

Jumjuma loved his commune'ssheep. He had- often heard hisfather say that only after theIiberation could his family and theother herdsmen have so manysheep and live a good life. He hadoften gone herding with his fatheror brother after school. When hesaw rams fighting with theirhorns he would throw a stone toseparate them. When a lamb wasafraid to cross a stream he wouldcarry it over. When a sheep gotilL he would hurry to call a veteri-narian. In this way he helped theolder herders.

The night seemed endless. Jum-juma kept on going round andround. He felt that now he was areal herdsman on duty. "You justhave to stick it out," he toldhimself .

At last it was light. The sheepbegan to hop about and the camelheld its head high. They peace-fully moved ahead in the directionchosen by their little driver.

mHE PEOPLE had been search-I ing for lhe boy lhrough the

night. Through the morning glowthey saw something white far inthe east. Soon they saw it clearly.ft was a moving flock. They dash-ed toward it. It was Jumjumawith the sheep.

"Pa, I've brought all 288 sheepback," Jumjuma greeted hisfather.

His father embraced him, butcouldn't utter a word.

"A young mountain eagle," saidSabit and the others. E

CHITDREN

Drowings bv Sho Gengshi

63

'Roof of the tfforld'

Stf II oving orthward

THE two million-square-kilo-r meter Qinghai-Tibet plateau

lies at an average of 4,000 metersabove sea level. Once it was thebottom of a great sea. The entirearea rose out of the r,r,ater about3 million years ago and began toform what became the world'shighest peak, Mt. Qomolangma(known as Mt. Everest in the west).How did this immense and dra-matic change occur?

At an academic symposium lastspring scientists from a teamwhich made a general survey ofthe plateau and geologists from allover China discussed the cause andprocess of the plateau's upthrust.

TENG JIWEN is a research worker ofthe Geophysical lnstitute under the Chi-neso Academy of S(riences.

Citing data obtained through yearsof survey and research in supportof their view, most of them werein agreement on certain theories.

Collision of Continents

As ascertained by geologists inthe past decade or so, the crust ofthe earth consists of "plates" thatslide over the hot semiplasticlayer below.

In the Carboniferous-Permianperiod (300 million years ago) theIndian subcontinent lay along thesoutheast side of present-dayAfrica. Both were part of theancient continent Gondwana whichthen embraced all the land in thesouthern hemisphere. In the earlyCretaceous period (100 millionyears ago) Gondwana broke up

TENG JIWEN

into what we know as Alrica,South America and other southernhemisphere lands, The expansionof the floor of the Indian Oceansent the Indian subcontinent drift-ing northeast. In the Eocene epoch(about 30-40 million years ago) itcollided with the Eurasian plateand settled down there" The colli-sion of the two plates deformed therock strata of the earth's clust,creating folds and deep rifts whichgradually took form as today'sHimalayas and the Qinghai-Tibetplateau. N{t. Qomolangma isthe ultimate outconre trf this colli-sion and conrplession.

Moving Plates

The movement of the earth splates is the lesult of massive and

Precise surveys in 1975 tletermined that the Himalayan up-thrust has pushed the ancient sea bottom up to a height of8848.13 meters al the peak of Mt. Qomolangma.

s.E?

64

At the nroutlr ol arr i('e ('a\ t'

CHINA RECONSTRUCTS

long-term movement of matterwithin the earth itself . Manymethods are used to determineand prove the movement of theplates. Reliable quantitative datais now provided by paleomag-netics, the study of the directionof magnetic poles in ancient rock.When rock layers are formed, thatis when lava cools off or when sed-imentation accumulates and hard-ens, they are influenced by themagnetisrn of the earth. RockIayers formed in past geologic agespreserve these lines of magneticforce, thus it can be told fromthem when and where the rockwas formed.

Paleomagnetic studies of rock onttre Qinghai-Tibet plateau showthat north of the Yarlung Zangbo(Yalutsangpo) River it has thesame paleomagnetism as rock inYunnan, Guangdong and Sichuanin China and even with those inKorea and the Soviet Union. Inother words, the north side of theriver is part of the Eurasian plate.But magnetism of rocks on thesouth side of the Yarlung Zangbocorresponds with that of theDeccan plateau in India and the

Salt Range in Pakistan. The areasouth of the Yarlung Zangbo fromthe river to the southern edge ofthe Himalayas is a long collision-compression belt where the Indiansubcontinent (now on the Indo-Australian, sometimes called SouthAsian plate) meets the Eurasianp1ate.

Recent geological findings sup-port the paleomagnetic evidence ofthis collision of plates. These in-clude evidence of glaciation similaito that in Gondwana, stepano-viella and well-preserved plantfossils of Glossopteris flora foundon the northern slope of Mt. Qo-molangma, which is south of theYarlung Zangbo. AII these arealso found in lands which wereonce part of Gondwana. So farno evidence of such deposits andfossils has been found north of theYarlung Zangbo.

In the Carbonif erous-Permianperiod a great ice cap starting fromthe South PoIe enveloped thewhole of the southern hemisphere.Even what are today tropical areasof Africa were covered with ice.The only place on the northernhemisphere which shows traces of

glaciation in this period is the In-dian subcontinent. It must haveexperienced this glaciation whileit was still in the southern hemi-sphere, before Gondwana split up.

The Himalayan Upthrust

Though collision with the Eura-sian plate slowed down the north-w-ard movement of the SouthAsran plaie, it is still movingnrrrthward. Now 3,000 km. awayIrom its place of origin, it is ;tillmoving at a speed of 50-60 milli-meters a year. Under compression,the earth's crust continures to fold,pushing the Himalayas still higher.This has a great influence onchanges in physical features of theplateau and adjacent areas, and onthe atmospheric circulation ofeastern Asia. The differences ingeomorphology and vegetation aremost apparent. The northern slopeof the range consists of barrenmountains, but on the south sideare valleys where tropical fruitsgrow. The compression zone itselfis rich in mineral deposits andsources of geothermal heat. E

Massive rock 16 meters tall anrl weighing over 10,000 tonsthrusts up to a height of 5,400 meters above sea level on thenorth slope.

Iz)

sv$

i:.,,;,

'i i'

ocToBER 1979 65

ilil

llll

ill Going to ilight $chool in Tlaniin

llll You YU*EN

iilr

I

i

tt.:

- :.i

Class in drafting at Workers' Cultural Palace No. l.

HEN ttre day's work is overaround 6 p.m., many factory

and other schools in the city orengineers and veteran workersfrom industrial plants.

Tianjin has other night schoolsrun directly by the department ofeducation. One is the XinhuaEvening University. It has its ownteaching staff, full or part-time,and offers special university-levelinstruction in science, engineering,literature. history, philosophy andmedicine. Duration varies accord-ing to the needs of the students..

People can also take a varietyof subjects in the "July 21" work-ers' universities, the name givento advanced education units set upby factories, mines and otherplaces of work for their own per-sonnel. Others study from televi-sion or radio or correspondencecourses. The desire to contribute

to China's modernization hasbrought many more aPPlicationsthan the schools can accommodate.When one night middle school an-'nounced it would take in 240 newstudents, ten times that numbersigned up.

Enthusiastic to Learn

As everywhere, attending nightschool involves considerablesacrifice. It often means goingright to class after work withoutchanging clothes or eating, anddoing homework late into thenight. Zhu Shuhua, who teachesmusic in a primarY school and is

studying in teacher-education atthe Xinhua Evening LTniversity,has to bring her 6-Year-olddaughter along to class (with Per-mission of the school) because herhusband, a driver with irregularhours, is not at home to care forthe child.

For six Years another student,Sun Keyuan, 42, has made the50-kilometer triP from TangguHarbor where he works to thecultural palace. His son, a Youngworker, is also studYing at theschool.

Devoting all his time to studYand technical innovation, uP tonow 33-year-old Li Yuming, whoworks in a radio Platrt, hasn'tsought female comPany, but todayhe thinks that if he were to finda young woman with his ideals itwould not affect his studY. Inthis respect Sun BaiYuan, who

and office workers in the northChina's metropolis of Tianjin donot go home but instead attendclasses. One place they go to isWorkers' Cultural Palace No. l,which houses a large night schooloperated by the municipal federa-tion of trade uaions with the helpof the city education department.It offers college-Ieve1 courses usingstandard college texts, specialtechnical training classes rangingfrom two months to one to twoyears in duration and technicallectures on particular problems.They are given by teachers fromTianjin and Nankai r:niversities

YOU YUWEN is a stallChina Reconstructs.

66

reporter lor

CIIINA BECONSTRUCTS

works in the telegraph office andis a part-time teacher at the cul-tural palace, is a good example.While studying lhere in 1957 notIong after the school opened, hefeII in'love with and married a

fel.low-student, who works in achemical plant. They did not letmarriage interfere with learning.When she wanted to do furtherstudy for her job Sun did his shareof the washing, cooking andmending. They helped each otherand made progress together.

Learning While Teaching

Su Shanli.i, a teacher at theTianjin Radio School, also teachesthe fundamentals of radio at thecultural palace. He found thatsome students had a hard timeunderstanding because they lackedbasic knowledge. Others raisedquestions related to their ownwork in radio factories which hefound difficult to answer becausehe lacked practical experience.

With a list of specific problemsin mind he went to work for atime in a radio plant, he learnedwhat the workers really needed toknow and was able to organize hismaterial in a way easier for hisstudents to understand.

The Tianjin Datly recently car-ried several articles on SongJingkang, an outstanding workerin the Tianjin Industrial PumpPlant. "We say a lot about build-ing socialism," it quoted Song assaying, "but it'Il be just emptytalk if workers don't improvetheir technical knowledge." Hehimself had tried to improve out-dated equipment, but found ithard because of insufficient tech-nical grounding. Later he studiedin the workers' university at hisplant and also took courses inmachinery at the cultural palace.

Once he happened to see in aforeign magazine a new type ofdrill which can make deep holeswith high polish and accuracy.But the magazine contained nodetails about its structure. Notlong afterward from a Chinesemagazine he learned that a fac-tory in Sichuan province was try-ing'to make a simiiar drill. Put-

ocToBER 1979

Zhu Shuhua's turn at thepiano as fellow membersof a course in PrimarYeilucation learn a new6Orlg.

Sun Baiyuan antl his wifedo their homework to-geiher.

Photos by Wong Xinmin

ting together information from lhetwo sources, with heIP from hisnight-school teachers and friends,in three months he made such a

drill himself. It cut the processingtime for making a certain casingfrom 230 to 30 minutes, imProvedaccuracy and reduced laborintensity.

Helped by night-school studies,Shi Guozhong, a young worker inthe Tianjin Ocean NavigationInstrument Plant, beeame an ex-pert on cutting tools and comPilerof the Concise Lathe OPerator'iHandbook. He has had a hand insome 100 innovations at his Plantor other factories and been electeda vice-leader of the metal-cutting

group of the Tianjin Mass Sci-ence and TechnologY CooPerationAssociation.

Many of the students havestudied several subjects. The sameperson may be teacher in one subject and student in another. LiYuming observes that his studies

have taken him through threestages of electronic technologY -electron tubes, transistors and in-tegrated circuits. "Night-schoolclasses have given me the knowl-edge with which to heIP mod-ernize our countrY," he saYs. Con-fidence that theY can acquire thisknowledge is perhaPs the most im-portant thing that all the studentshave learned at night school' [f]

67

tl

Scieniists discussing the general layout of the 50 bev proton synchroaroD.

:\('Il0SS'[tlF] l,AN f,

fi^fi frg ffinrengy ffiftnysfies

Experimental Center

f\ HINA'S first high energy\-r physics experimental center isto be built near Beijing. Surveyingis in full swing f or construc-tion of China's first 50 bev(billion-electron-volt) proton syn-chrotron.

The high-energy particle accel-erator is an experimental installa-tion to supply high energy chargedparticles. Involving the assistanceof prominent foreign physicists, itwill help train Chinese scientistsin this advanced field. Such re-search can lead to a deeper under-standing of the physical microcos-mos which in turn may yield ideasfor use in industry. t i EScientists trying the prototypecavity of the line acceleratormade by the Institute of tlighEnergy Physics untler theChinese Academy of Sciences.Left inset shows the innerstructure of the prototypecavity.

Photos b1y Yang Wumin

68 CHINA RECONSTRUCTS

A week-long forum on the/ r history of the Taiping Revolu-tion of 1851-64, one of the greatestpeasant uprisings in China's longhistory, was held in Nanjing lastsummer. Attendance by 260

specialists and other historians -not only from China but fromBritain, the U.S.A., the FederalRepublic of Germany, Belgium,Japan and Canada - testified tothe wide interest in the subject.

The Taipings fought successfullyfor ten years against the feudalQing dynasty (1644-1911) andaggressors frorn abroad. Theyprovided valuable experience andIessons for the Chinese people intheir struggle to finally liberatethemselves almost a century later.

Nanjing, the one-time capital ofthe Taiping state (known as theTaiping Heavenly Kingdom) was afitting site for the forum.

Chinese and foreign participantspresented 2L7 papers expressingdifferent views on somd majorhistorical questions. Among thesewere:

l. What ideas guided theTaiping Revolution?

Opinions were exchanged on theorigin and evolution of the think-ing of Hong Xiuquan, the move-ment's founder and supremeleader. Many agreed that it wasa mixture of certain Christianteachings, the equalitarian conceptsof past peasant uprisings in China,and the "universal harmony,,preached by the Confucians. Asto which aspect predominated,however, there was debate.

One view held that the essencewas peasant revolutionary thoughtdirected against feudalism andforeign aggression and ac-companied by naive peasantequalitarianism inherited fromthe past, and that Hong Xiuquanborrowed front' the west only thereligious form and his "One True

ocToBER 1979

[)eoate Among Historians

A Forum

o the

wealth. This generated serious in-ternal conflicts in the Taipingranks. Others claimed that he wasblameless in all respects,

As regards Shi Dakai, a seniorTbiping general, the participantsconcurred that his departure on aseparate expedition was not a signof hostility to the revolution. Butthey differed about his reputed"humble petition to surrender" tothe Qing dynasty forces when hisarmy was besieged at the DaduRiver in Sichuan province. Somefelt that it was a tale inade upby the enemy. Others felt it wastrue and inexcusable, and thatthe fact that he did not betray the*Taipings after capture should notexcuse his surrender.

Li Xiucheng, another notedTaiping general, aroused particu-lar controversy. His defenderssaid his heroic merits oi-rtweighedhis faults, and that his confessionas a prisoner was a tactical move,not a capitulation. Othersdeclared that even though hisprevious fighting services shouldbe recognized, by this confessionLi Xiucheng negated and disgracedhis Taiping title of "LoyalPrince.'l

3. What was the nature of theTaiping State?

One view was that it was ananti-imperialist and anti-feudalpeasant political Power. A secondregarded it as still mainly feudal.A third held that it contained bothaspects. That is, while it was

anti-feudal at the start, it had notshaken off his own feudal featuresand so, as time passed, let thembecome predominant and movedtoward inevitable defeat.

In liveliness of the debate, andin serious approach to documenta-tion and argument, the forum wasan expression of the policy, "let a

hundred schools of thought con-

ReYolution

.:.

IIIi

Taipi

f.r co-'-oeo-,,-il-,r-,r-,,oo=r*,rlr

God." Another stressed hisborrowing of some Christianconcepts. Others said Confucianideas were the base.

2. What should be the judgmentof history on certain of theTaiping leaders?

Hong Xiuquan was seen by allas an outstanding peasant revolu-tionary leader of immense achieve-ment and a pioneer in trying tolearn from the west things needed

for the emancipation of China andher people. But they did notregard him as infallible, or as

being free from mistakes, includ-ing serious ones.

Yang Xiuqing, one of Hong'schief assistants in building themovement, was alsoassayed. Somethought him an outstanding leaderto be commended for great exploitswhich were inseparable from theearly successes of thE Taipings, butalso one who made grave errors.One of these was to wage a

struggle for personal power and E69

tend." i

/-r ONNOISEURS of chinawareU generally associate the nameYixing (Yihsing) with the famousred stoneware teapots made in thecity, sometimes called China's"pottery capital." Yixing hasanother claim to interest - itswonderful karst caverns formed bywater washing and drippingagainst soft rock over eons of time"

The southernmost city in Jiang-su province, Yixing lies on thewest shore of Taihu Lake on thelower reaches of the Changjiang(Yangtze) River. It is bordered onthree sides by fertile lake-dottedplains. To the southwest rises a

chain of hills. The caverns are attheir foot.

Best-known are the Shanjuanand Zhanggong Caverns. Theformer, situated in Mount Luoyansome 25 kilometers from the town,is the subject of many legends, thechief one about the poet calledShanjuan for whom it is named.Four to five thousand years egowhen the legendary HuangheRiver va1ley rulers Yao, Shun andYu were transferring their king-ship to one another, Yao abdicatedin favor of Shun, and Shun in turntried to give the position to thepoet Shanjuan. The latter refusedindignantly. "I am free to go

wherever I please between heavenand earth, so. what do I want withthe throne!" Feeling that Shun'swords had sullied his ears Shan-juan washed them in a river, thenwent south to live in seclusion inthis cavern.

It IORE reliable historical recordslYl ptace the discovery of thesecaverns some 2,000 years ago in theSpring and Autumn period (770-476 B.C.). Totaling about 5,000

square meters in area, the Shan-juan Caverns are in three tiers,and consist of the upper cavernand middle, Iower and water

Nature's indoor scenery, ShanjuanCaverns. Han Qilou

HAN QILOU

CTIINA RECONSTRUCTS

A stretch of the underground river is navigable.

Slalactites reflected in ihe rvater create a lotus oond

Jin Baoyuan

Jiang Wei

I

'1+

ii

ti:-!

aL"F fuuudalirrn rr!liar"' stalagffiitr,. 3:,(itr0 yea!rr il-gr {}H ilrq CLLen CfLunxLla.

Jin BattuuaTh+ ecrie r€{'os.ses ol the \1'a(erCave!'n, Slranjuan Caverns,

.{{eui;ing '"loIus " ShanjrranJiaitE Wei.

caverns, Deep, mysterious r€_cesses, winding galleries, boomingcataracts and .an assortment otfantastic stalactites and stalagmitescombine to create an exquisitefairyland.

Entrance is through the midE-lecavern. Firsta massive sevemite called theIt is thought

cave ;widens further inward, onecomes to a rock chamber knownas Lion and Elephant Arena. Fiftymeters deep and twenty wide, itcan accommodate about 1,g00 visi_tofs at a time. On either side aretwo big natural rocks, one striking-ly resembling a lion and the othJran elephant, when viewed fromthe right angle.

The upper cavern is shaped likea snail shell. Filled with mist mostof the time, it is cool in summerand warm in winter, maintaininga temperature of about 28 degreescentigrade the year round. Fromthe ceiling droop weird stalactites,many resembling such realand imaginary animals as horsesand dragons. Spring water seepingout here and there along the wallscollects in pools of all shapes andsizes. The two largest are namedafter Wa Huang and pan Gu, twofigures in Chinese mythology, whoare supposed to have bathed here.The goddess Wa Huang was saidto have melted rocks to repair acrack in the sky caused by spiritsfighting with each other. pan Guwas the god credited with creatingthe universe.

A winding tunnel Ieads from theupper to the lower cavern, downstone stairs passing through fourstone "gates." After a heavy rainStrange sounds can be heard as onetraverses this course. First comesa sound like distant waves andbreakers, gradually changing toone of muted wind and thunder.then of rolling war drums andfinally of a herd of gallopinghorses - hence the names of thefour gates: Breaker Gate, Wind

ocToBER 1919

and Thunder Gate, War DrumGate and Ten-Thousand HorsesGate, The source of these effectsis a u.,aterfali at the end of thetunnel and in front of the lowercavern. After a downpour itcrashes down in a foaming torrent,whose reverberations are subtlymodified by the acoustics of eachstretch of tunnel.

The lower cavern is narrowand about 180 meters long yithstalactites of all shapes and sizessuspended from the vault. On theright side a swirl of water plungesfrom a spring, flowing throughtwists and turns into a waterwayat the bottom, known as the WaterCavern. Roughly 120 meters long,and two to five meters deep, it islarge enough for rowboats whichare available.

rnHE Zhanggong Caverns, equallyI famous, lie some 22 ki-lometers

to the southwest of Yixing. Theyare entirely different in layout,comprising an interlocking .mazeof 72 caverns, some within othersand each providing a differentvisual delight.

The total area of the Zhang-gong Caverns comes to roughlyts,000 square meters. They can be'toured by a kilometer-long route.Entering, one comes first to a spa-cious "hall," adorned with bizarrehoulders, stalagmites, naturalpillars, screens and "flowers" ofrock. Upward along a spiral stor-restaircase, one reaches a still Iargerhall called the HaIl of the Sea God..From the vault of the cave perpe-.tually hidden in mist, hang many,oddly-shaped rocks reminiscent ofgarlands or tassels. Two hoary:stalagmites tower up like pillars.and a brace of enormous hangingboulders look like palace lanterns.A 12-square-meter pool in the,center of the hall duplicates thescene in its mirror-smooth waters.

Many smaller caves lead offfrom the Hall of the Sea God, each-a little world in itself, with its ownlegends and fables. One such cave,noted for its networ-k of tunnelsand galleries, has a rock sever.al.meters square projecting from i1,s

roof. On this rock are faintly dis-cernible lines like those on a chbss

board, tlrus the cave'$ name Chess-board Cavern. Here, says a legend,the g<lds came to play chess, andthe following story is part ofYixing county lole: In the Tangdynasty (A.D. 618-90?) a youngscholar visited the ZhanggongCaverns. After wandering about,candle in hand, for a dozen Ii hecame upon two Taoist monks play-ing chess. Seeing that the scholarwas tired and hungry, one of themonks pointed to some black mudnearby and told him it could beeaten, The scholar put some inhis mouth and found it very tasty.The monk told him that after heleft hc should take care not to tellany human being about this in-cident. The scholar bowed histhanks and departed. Hidden inhis bosom, however, was a handfulof the black mud, which he intend-ed to show to the people in thecity. But when he emerged fromthe cave, the mud had become as

hard as stone.After leaving the caves a short

waLk brings one to the mountain-top. On a rock wall lour charac-ters carved there in the Yuandynas[y (1279-1368) read: "HaiNei Qi Guan" (one of the mostmarvelous scenes in China). Look-ing into the distance, one is notdisappointed. Taihu Lake's broadwaters, dotted here and there withsails, ripple away into the hazydistance, and blue skies are met byrolling green mountains coveredwith groves of bamboo, terracedlield.s and tea plantations - allfacets in the sparkling beauty ofYixing. E

73

Ghina's Rail Transport

Building Up

- An interview with Guo Weicheng, Minister of Railways

A groduote of Fudon University in Shonghoi,Guo Weicheng hos been engoged in the recon-struction ond development of Chino's roil systemsince he become heod of the Qiqihor RoilwoyBureou in '1945 ot the end of the Joponese occupo-tion of northeost Chino" He wos oppointedMinister of Roilwoy's in 1978.

f,vh#flT}::s' Minister

a. In the 30 years since the founding of the new our huge cou4try, about the size of the whole ofChina, wha,t progress has been made in developing Europe, had only 22,000 kilometers of tracks, ofand expanding the railroads? which only half were usable. They were of different

gauges and in general poor. The control system,A. In railroads as in industry and agriculture, China communications and signal systems were outdated.has made great progress. At the time of liberation The rolling stock was old.

Chino's Roilroods

Urunqiq

. r;5\ - ---.

Under Comtrud'nn

Built Afler l-ibralion

Built klore 1949

tb.h

---"Lines lhnnirg I

map B Pei Xhomd

CHINA RECONSTBUCTS

A bridge over ahe Buha River on the Qinghai-Tibet llne being built by ihe P.L.A. railway corps.

Between 1949 when the railroads were takenover by our new state and last year, 1978, we in-creased our track in operation to 50,000 kilometers.Large-scale construction was done, on a dozen trunkIines in the northwest, southwest and border regions.We also repaired and improved the old ones. A11main lines, for example, have been double tracked.Communication and signal systems hdve been im-proved, using advanced technology. Some of ourmain depots have installed mechanized or semi-automated camel-hump marshaling y4rds to speedup operations,

As to passenger and freight traffic, in 1950 wecarried 150 million passengers, and' last year 800million. In the same period the volume of freightrose from 100 milLion tons to 1,070 million. We'vealso developed our rolling stock industry, we nowproduce large numbers of diesel and electri.c locomo-tives and,other modern items. So We've made con-siderable progress in the last 30 years. But ofcourse we have a long way to go to catch up withthe more advanced countries.

a. In describing new railway building you em-phasized the northwest and southwest regions. Why?

ocToBER, 1979

A. The reasons are historical. Before liberationabout 60 percent of our lines were concentratedalong the coast. Most of those were built by foreignimperialists, to help them exploit our natural re-sources and seize our territorj. The northwest andsouthwest, where scores of our minority natioriali-ties live, had virtually no railways. In 1950 webegan to construct new lines in the northwest. Nowwe have a rail network there, with its center atLanzhou in Gansu province.

In the southwest seven main lines were built inSichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces. They arethe Chengdu-Chongqing, Baoji-Chengdu, Chongqing-Guiyang, Guiyang-Kunming, Chengdu-Kunming,Zhuzhou-Guiyang and Xiangfan-Chongqing lines.Together they form a circular network, Iinking thosethree provinces with Beijing and other parts of thecountry.

We have also constructed some electrified linessuch as the Baoji-Chengdu and Yangpingguan-Ankang, both already in use. Two more, the Xiang-fan-Chongqing line and Baoji-Tianshui-Lanzhouline, are under construction.

75

a. And the other areas of China?

A. We've also built some new main lines in thenorth, east and south. For example, in the Changbaland Greater and Lesser Hinggan Mourrtains of north-east China, we've built forest railways.

We've converted the old Beijing-Shanghai andBeijing-Guangzhou lines, two of our early mainnorth-south lines, Io double track and added severalmain and branch lines along them, including theTaiyuanlJiaozuo, Jiaozuo-Zhicheng and Zhicheng-Liuzhou lines.

Ail play a prominent part in helping to developChina's economy, to strengthen her national defeilseand to promote unity and friendly intercoufse amongher different nationalities.

a. TVhat other lines are being built today?"

A. AII in all, our railway system has not,kept pacewith our expanding economy and socialist construc-tion. Now we are changing this.

Minorlty women flash happy smiles:The Chengdu-Kunming rall llne bringsmore goods from industrlal areas.

On the Chengdu-Kunming line.

Being built now is a 470-km, line from Turpanto Korla in southern Xinjiang. It is the first line insouthern Xinjiang.

Then there is the Qinghai-Tibet line (Xining toLhasa), the first stage of which, the 830-km" stretchfrom Xiningto Golmud, has already been built. It'sa very difficult line to construct as it crosses the"roof of the world,"

In eastern and southern China, the 560:km.Anhui-Jiangxi line (Wuhu to Guixi) rs under con-struction frorh both ends. Its completion wiII shortenthe distance from Nanjing to Jiangxi or Fujian prov-incas by 300 km. Also newly in operation is the853-km. Iine from Zhicheng in Hubei to Liuzhou inthe Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

In the north, the line between Beijing and Tongliaoin Jilin province has just been completed and is nowin operation. This 870-km. line is the second mainline linking north China with the northeast.

There are also branch lines being built from themain mining and industrial centers.

A. Chini is vast and immensely varied and complexin terrain. Supely the railroad builders must havehad to overcome many problems. Can you tell usabout some of them?

A. The difficulties have been many, but by relyingon their' own efforts and hard work and utilizingthe local resoufcec our railway builders have over-come them. This is true of the Lanzhou-Urumqi,Baotou-Lanzhou, Fengtai-Shacheng, Baoji-Chengdu,Yingtan-Xiamen, Kunming-Guiyang, Zhuzhou-Gui-yang and Chongqing-Guiyang lines and particularly'of the Chengdu-Kunming and Xiangfan-Chongqinglines, which were the most difficult, They crossmountains, rivers, deserts, swamps, permafrost andmud-rock flow areas, seismic belts and other dif-ficult terrain. In some places there is a danger oflandslides.

The 669 km.-long Baoji-Chengdu line, built justafter liberation, crosses the Qinling Mountains thatseparate Sichuan and Shaanxi provinces. ' It has 303

tunnels totaling 84 km. and 994 bridges totaling27 km. That's an average of 1.5 bridges and half a

tunnel per kilometer of line. The line was completedin five and a half years.

The Qinghai-Tibet line passes over a salt lake32 km. across. The embankment is constructed withhalogen rock and gravel.

Perhaps the most difficult line was the 901 km.from Xiangfan to Chongqing, 45 percent of whichconsists of bridges and tunnels. Our railway engi-neers and workbrs have gained a lot of valuableexperience.

e. Some foreign countries now treat rail transportas secondary. They concentrate on air and roadtransport. Does China plan to do this?

A. Modern means of transport haven't yet beenwldely developed in China. Railroads are still ourmain emphasis. Because our natural resources'

CHINA RECONSTRUCIS

minqs, industrial centers and ports are scattered overa vast area, transport over long distances is required.Today, railways carry 60 percent of all our passengerand freight traffic.

As this situation will remain for some time, weare making great efforts to expand our railways,

A. How is China modernizing her rolling stockindustry?

A. Again, let's start with history. Before 1949 weonly had a dozen repair depots. There was no suchthing as a Iocomotive or even car built entirely inChina. About 110 different types of locomotives and700 kinds of wagons arld cars were in a motleyvariety.

China built her first steam locomotive in 1952.In 1958 we began to design and make our own dieseland electric ones. Recently we have made morepowerful models. We also make special-purposecars. Our rolling stock industry has become a com-prehensive System which can do both repairs andmanuf acturing.

Even so we still can't meet the needs of mod-ernization. We are trying to improve our technologyand increase production, to catch up with the ad-vanced countries. We will import what technologywe need for this.

a. What did you learn during your recent tourabroad?

A. The four countries we visited - France, WestGermany, Belgium and Japan - all 'have modernrailway systems. In the 1950s and 60s they werealready using electric and diesel locomotives exten-sively. We, by comparison, up to the end. of lastyear had only 1,026 km. of electrified track. Steamlocomotives are still our main form of traction.

Those countries all have 30-40 percent automaticblocking lines, whereas we cinly have 13 percent.Trains on their main lines weigh between 5,000 and10,000'tons, on ours only 3,000 tons. Their highestspeed passenger trains go at 160 kilometers per hourand some even reach 200 k.p.h. Our top speed is onlyaround 100 k.p.h. In some of these countries a traindeparts every four to six minutes, whereas our short-est intervals are twice that.

I would like, through your magazine, to againthank these host countries for their thoughtfutplanning during our visit and for giving us everyopportunity to study their railway systems in allaspects. I send my warm greetings to all our friendsin the government and rail bureaus who gave ussuch hospitality.

What measures are you taking now,. or planningthe future, to enable China's railways to betterher modernization?

A. While concentrating on modernizing our oldlines, ws are also building new ones. By imprbvingthe old lines, I mean increasing their haulagecapacity, train speeds and traific density. We shall

ocToBER 1979

;;:/

Difficult terrain crossed by ihe

I

Xiangfan-Chongqing line.Photos bg Xinhua

a.foraid

continue to replace the old steam locomotives withelectric and diesel ones so that by 1985 these witlmake up about 60 percent.

Here.are some other things we hope to accom-plish: Our passenger cars will be lighter and morecomfortable and our freight cars larger. We'II in-crease the percentage of freight carried by specializedcars. Dispatehing, station operation and trafficmanagement will be automated or semi-automatedon the major lines. By 1985 we hope to have mech-anized 80 percent of our loading and unloading, Iineconstruction, maintenance and repairs,

We also plan by then to builil six more rnaiortrunk lines and some branch ones. E

tt

CARTOONS

IlIiao Yintang

Gootl for the waisilinebut not for the sapllng

Li Shiming and. Fon Guanglin

The lazy matr's application ofthe principle of terrestrialgravity to a fruit tree

Li Fengutt

CIIINA RECONSTRUCTS

Going to Yangshuo

( a"€*. ii + i.p&a q'r>(JiEnddA flng HuA ltry6utuan birfen(Canada visit China tourist group portion

d"n ^L&+t- * fiu * rH#t )ch6ngyu6n c6ng Guilin ch6ng chuAn qir Ydngshud)members from Guilin (going) by boat to Yangshuo)

*.Fs,f: ,{L #Pr- * ralfl 6 ? wzShimisl: C6ng Guilin qir YAngshub y6u du6 yutrn?

Smith: From Guilin to Yangshuo has how far'l

1z y 4b krt d ^f A-E.lilAng: Zad chuAn diryuE y6u b6shi gdngli.

Wang: Ride boat about have 80 kilometers.

*\,ftt t, 4b L T v)( fiKft i*,;rWdmen zAi chudnshirng kEyi xinshlng LijiengWe at boat on can enjoy r jjiang

A1 Df,"X.de fEngguEing.

scenery.

A*'1, iil)t aIJ ,l<, 4 -ft ,FIr IL+Mili: Lijieng de' shui zhEn qing a! Jih[Marib: Lijiang's water really clear! Almost

h?, h 1l ,K,t* al E *o .n6ng kindAo shuidi de shitou.can see to water bottom's stones.

hiln' {. t h4r {. fr, )t ffi H allB6llng: GCng m6i de hei shi jEng lilng irn deBrown: More beautiful still is river both banks

fli.,E +J,+-nirxiE qif6ng

*E " E,ftl tryishi. Timen ddu

those fantastic hills (and) strange rocks. They all

d ,87 ,4tydu mingzi ma?

have names?

-Lz 6 " 'f,t'fll h, ,i E Jr n{ *W6ng: Y6u. Nimen kirn, zhO zud shin iiiro XiirngWang: Have. You look, this hill called Elephant

4,:t, Hh t !t* - * k*-BI ShEn, yinwdi ti htroxiing yi t6u dirxiirngTrunk Hill, because it tooks like an elephant

lv- ++ ,ff,$ )r g, ,J. d5bI bizi sh6njin jieng [, xiiochudn

trunk stretch river in, (a) small boat

Tv){ A * ++ T lflit.kEyi c6ng xiimg bizi xii tdnggu6.can from eleph4nt trunk under pass through.

'ocToBER r9?9

Lesson L0

{ff,f, iif6 rtl\ E & *t*Shimisi: Qidnmiirn nA zud shin hloxiing yiSmith: Ahead that hill looks like a

tE+. '13

u{ tl A fi '/v'tmirozi. Nn jiio sh6nme shin ne?

hat. That called what hill?

Az #13 rrf trtE . fi lE if ,W4ng: Ni jino Guiny{n. Z:Ai wing qiAn,

Wang: That (is) called Crown Rock. Further ahead

-,rL L *h ai ^.q@h"

t,jiit shl zhirming de JiumlhuirshEn' ZAi

is famous Nine Horses Picture Hill. At

q E L, 4" K gq's tfl,fr , 'i1i.sMn shi shirng, rtgu6 xixin guinshlng, iithill rock oo, if(you) carefully look at, (you)

frV n *467^.-++atril,n6ng rln chii zttiri bt ylyimC de iincan recognize out postures not same nine

Eq +.pi ml lAi.

horses.

trrt,i:tr 4 X- lt E TtSekast: Zhin shi tiri mEi le!Sachs: (It) really is very beautiful!

Az El 1 fall#L R. *.W6ng: Dirole YAngshuir iinesa gdng m6i.

Wang: (When we) arrive in Yangshuo scenery (is) more beautiful.

faln wH 4 k Jre+, g^'Y6ngshud sizh6u d6u shi sMnfGng, zhdnggC

Yangshuo all around all are hills, whole

fHlI.,-rt, * + *.iL"Ydngshud iit xiirng yi dud lidnhud.

' Yang'shuo just like a lotus flower.

*.#,'ts'tiL f E +{\ ,+A fr*Shlmisl: Ting shu6 Zhbnggu6 g[rhi shtr6n z]nmEi

Smith: (I) hear China's ancient poets praise

tLtt- ,It ,F P RT "Guilh sh5nshul jil tiiinxii.

Guilin landscape (as) best heaven under.

az tr&4 /\ t+fr,! frx raf[WAng: Ddrn yE y6u r6n tabi6 zinmEi Ydneshud

Wang: But also have people especially praise Yangshuo's

tl &{<, if,, "tr]afifl &,Fde sb5nshui, shu6, "YAngshud shEnsbul

landscape, say, "Yangshuo's landscape

79

Ifiding

f lllt-." fr, frfo ,iLiil Guilin." Kirn, (i6nmiln jit

is best in Guilin." I-ook. ahead

,E #),+ "BiliAnfEng.Green Lotus Hill.

4*,1: 'l* 4,1 fH lA 1 ,q?MAlt: 'Kuiri dAo Ydngshud le ma?Marie: Soon arrive Yangshuo?

-I: F/t * 4{ 1"W{ng: Jit yio diro Ie.Wang: immediately (we) will arrive.

Translation

(Some members of the Canadian Chiha tour group are goingto Yangshuo from Guilin by boat)Smith: How far is it from Guilin to Yangshuo?Wang: About 80 kilometers by boat. On the boat we can

enjoy the scenery of the Lijiang River.Marie: The water in Lijiang River is really clear. We can

almost see down to the stones on the bottom of the river.Brown: Even more beautiful are those fantastic hills and strange-

looking rocks along the banks. Do they all havenames?

Wang: Yes. Look, this hill is called Elephanr Trunk Hillbecause it looks like an elephant stretching its trunk intothi river. A small boat can pass through under thetrunk.

Smith: That hill ahead looks like a hat. What is it called?Wang: It is called Crown Rock. Further ahead is the famous

Picture-of-Nine-Horses-Hill. If you look carefully,you can pick out nine horses in different postures onthe rocks.

Sachs: It's really beautiful!

Wang: When we arrive in Yangshuo, the scenery is even morcbeautiful. Yangshuo is surrounded by hills. Yang-shuo iS shaped like a lotus flower.

Smith: I heard that Chinais ancient poets praised Guilin'slandscape as the best under heaven,

Wang: But some people especially praise the landscape ofYangshuo, saying, "Its landscape is the best inGuilin." Look, ahead is the Green Lotus Hill.

Marie: Are we arriving in Yangshuo soon?Wang: Yes, We'll be there immediately.

Notes

1. Yiro. . . Ie *..'J to show immediate fu-ture. For example. lVdmen yio dio Ydngshutr le

*.{n*r,l falnl (We will arrive in Yangshuosoon.) \ildmen tudyiln de xihgli yio dio le *\,mjsEfr1Jii+*+rl T (Our checked baggage will arivesoon). Yio . . . le can be replaced by jiu yio . . . le,-rt*... T ;,kuiri yio . . . le t**... 1, iiilng yio...le .lf *... T, jiu. . . Ie -,fi.;.! and kuii. . . Ie ,l*

2. Duo I to ask about rneasrirement.

We have already learned something like thisin the use of dudshao , ,y (how many), as indudshao qi6n? p ,)' Hl (How much money ?).

Sometimes du6 is put before an adjective toask about measurement. For example, C6ngGuilin qi Ydngshud dud yu[n? ,tL+L*t+fafn r w?(How far is it from Guilin to Yangshuo?) Nir zudshdn'dud gdo?. fllt{h?A? (How high is thatmountain?) tr

E'€shl

is

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CHINA RECONSTBUCTS

The Imperial Garden in the Palace Museum. Beiiing. Xie Jurt