THIS IS CHINA

here is china cradle of civilization in asia homeland of 450 million human beings more than one-fifth of the population of the earth like our own america china is a vast and beautiful country with wide extremes of climate and contour scenes like these have inspired its poets and painters from time immemorial china and almost as remote as the moon to us here in america but the airplane has brought it within 50 flying hours of our coasts our common struggle has brought its people close to our hearts today our soldiers and theirs fight together on many battlefields our flyers and theirs guard the skies of china side by side so we want to know more about these people of china our friends and our allies how they live and work and about their country which many of us will visit in the days to come china is a land of rivers great and small and an important staple of food is fish in this type of fishing you don't have to bait a hook or worry about whether the fish will bite the cormorant takes care of all that these birds are slaves of a notorious appetite a fact which the chinese fisherman wisely turns to his own advantage the comrade seems to be happy in his slavery everyone seems contented with the whole arrangement except understandably the fish the staff of life in china is not bread but rice rice fields called paddies dot the landscape but even so the country cannot raise enough rice for its huge population in peace time it had to import rice from other countries rice grows underwater and here the water is brought to the rice by a simple but effective mechanism the water wheel agricultural methods like these are almost as old as china itself the water buffalo is a popular beast of all work here he turns an irrigation wheel more than 80 of all the people in china live on farms and the average individual farmers holding is less than four acres this means that every foot of fertile earth must be cultivated carefully and intensively from dawn to dusk of every day there are hundreds of thousands of little farms handed down from generation to generation through the centuries and worked today with the same tools and methods as of old the chinese raise vast crops of wheat tea beans millet and other cereals and grains they've never been prosperous enough to support cattle and sheep on the yield of their tiny farms and comparatively little land is given over to pasture land is simply too valuable and must be devoted to subsistence crops experts from our own department of agriculture are now working with the chinese government on a program of scientific farming studying such problems as soil conservation erosion and reforestation after this war an agricultural modernization probably will accompany the industrialization of the country for the machine and modern scientific methods have come to china to stay and perhaps to put an end to want and famine as well as to scenes like these where there are so many mouths to be fed nearly everybody has a job to do yes in china everybody works well nearly everybody here's a handsome and healthy looking family and a typical farm home in the north further north beyond the great wall there are different scenes this is a country of wild mountains and wastelands of nomadic tribes of herdsmen and horsemen and it's the home of the famous mongolian ponies whose ancestors carried the legions of genghis khan on their conquest to the ancient world a conquest that led to the very gates of vienna that overran russia and ruled the earth from korea to the vulgar the cowboys of our own wild west could hardly show these riders any tricks of horsemanship you'll notice that instead of a lariat they use a long pole with a noose at the end and they invariably get their horse another vital industry in china salt this arrangement of sails catches every wind that blows and thereby turns the pump that brings the salt up from the mine through the centuries many wars have been fought for the possession of this essential of human and animal diet that is held true in the present war for the invaders rightly consider they have won a victory when they can deprive a section of china of its salt supply even ice and snow do not stop the important business of fishing here they are fishing through the ice of a stream a job that requires all the patience and all the warm clothing you can possibly muster unless you suspect that they never catch a fish here is proof that they do this seems to be something that the youngsters in america never thought of spinning their tops on ice here's also something new for american boys and girls to try a combination of skating and sledding this seems to be a lot of fun but of course you have to be built for it in the interior problems of transportation are solved in many different ways for cross-country journeys through desert country they use the camel as in ancient times when the burma road was closed for a time in 1940 camel caravans from russian turkistan were china's principal supply line to the outside world in transportation there's always the mule everywhere on earth and everywhere in china the mule is unbeatable as a burden carrier where the going is rough and highways non-existent as in most of the interior the government's initial 10-year program calls for something like 200 000 miles of modern roads in the period of reconstruction plus nearly 20 000 miles of railroads and a network of airlines for passenger and freight but meanwhile there is the mule and where burdens are not too great or distances too long human muscles do the job out here in the country and in the towns and cities as well transport by river and canal is a vast industry the smaller boats are called sampans some of them are propelled by sculling that is working in ore placed in the stern of the boat they hoist a small sail when the wind is favorable the word junk is usually applied to the larger boats with tall sails some of these are capable of navigating the oceans the chinese you know invented the compass and many other features of the science of navigation for thousands of families the family boat is their only possession in the world the sam pan is their home in every sense of the word they cook their meals eat and sleep there and gain a slender livelihood from the sale of fish that they catch or from the delivery of small cargos of freight along the riverfront in this crowded city the houses rest on stilts to protect them against flood waters this of course is chung king temporary capital of china this ancient city was abruptly transported into the brutal realities of the 20th century in 1938 when nanking fell and the government needed a new capital they chose chung king 1100 miles to the west deep in the interior beyond the rugged mountains it was as if we had moved our own government from washington over the alleghenies and beyond the mississippi without railroads or highways to travel on chun king is famous for its steps this london is famous for its bridges and new york for its skyscrapers from the river's edge to the heart of the city the pedestrian must climb a total of 360 steps for chung king is built on and around a mountain now we are on the great yangtze river which flows by chunking from its sources in the eternal snows of the mountains of tibet and continues on eastward through the heart of china to the china sea at shanghai the gorges of the yangtze are world famous for their majestic beauty navigating the turbulent yangtze is a stiff challenge to the strength and ingenuity of the boatman shoals rocks and treacherous currents are a continual menace one of china's post-war tasks is to enlarge and deepen the channel of its mighty rivers and harness them so as to prevent flood as well as shipwreck in the future engines will provide the power to master these rivers but for the present they remain grueling tasks for human muscles these boats are fighting a stiff current the crew of one finds a task of rowing impossible and so wades to shore and takes up the job on land it's a desperately hard job scenes like these have no counterpart anywhere in the world this boat has found still waters here is a stream that defies navigation but nevertheless it serves another old familiar human purpose as the neighborhood laundry tub but the waters of china serve some lighter uses too here's an oriental version of a bullfight with water buffalo as the antagonists the only danger points in this phrase seem to be the toes of the fight fans certainly these iron-headed beasts seem to be enjoying it and here we have the winner and the new champion one of the most colorful types of chinese sport and pageantry is the dragon boat festival the history of this goes back to ancient times and various stories seek to explain its origin one popular version says that a renowned poet statesman drowned himself in the river as a protest against corrupt government and his friends set out in their boats to recover his body each year on the anniversary of his death they went to the river again to call up his spirit to witness they were true to the cause for which he died but today the dragon boat festival survives as a race between long canoes some of them manned by as many as 70 men each community along the river has its entry and the townsfolk come along to cheer the competitors here too we have a winner but sometimes the rivers of china turn unkind and the disaster of flood visits the countryside in the past millions of lives and billions in property values have been destroyed by the waters but in the future modern engineering will control these rivers for the safety and the service of the people this is just another of the many big tasks of peacetime for which the government and people are now preparing even while they carry on the long bitter struggle for freedom china has been called the sleeping giant because it clung to the ways of the past while the younger civilizations of europe and america embarked on the industrial revolution but in the years following 1911 when the reign of the manchu emperors was ended china began to relax its old rigid tradition of farm and village culture and to emerge into the modern world this progress was slowed down by the civil wars that were the birth pangs of the new republic but the industrial revolution had begun and the chinese were showing a natural aptitude for the use of the machine the great seaport of shanghai was a center of this new industrial life shanghai was first attacked by the japanese in 1932 a year after their seizure of manchuria and from then on the chinese worked rapidly to build the wealth and the productive power which they knew they would need to withstand the inevitable assault on china proper on the home front handsome residential sections like this were constructed modernization was coming swiftly in every phase of life particularly in the larger cities along the seacoast strange new scenes for ancient china public health clinics were opened the best of modern medicine came to china and was welcomed by government and people popular education was spreading young china was going to school james yen who had studied in america and gone home to china started his great mass education movement working with the government he devised a sort of basic chinese from his country's complicated picture language and even young children found they could master this after they learn the shapes of the characters the actual writing is greatly simplified this pretty little girl seems to be having no trouble china was building strong minds and strong bodies aware of the importance to the nation of a vigorous and informed youth here's a young fellow who means business the life of young people in the large cities was much like ours here in america it was for china a renaissance a swift but ordered march into the modern world a remarkable achievement for a people that had always held the ways of the past in deepest reverence here are examples of the young men and women the colleges were producing fine representatives of new china studying the arts of peace but peace was not on the program of the ambitious rulers of the island empire across the china seas suddenly in 1937 the japanese struck on a vast scale and china's battle for its life began then different scenes unoffending people fleeing from the horrors of total war 50 millions of people like these were the victims up and down the land of china they were driven from their homes separated from their loved ones and each one who survived had a story of terror and death to tell those who escaped were the lucky ones for behind them the survivors of bomb and bullet were either slaughtered or enslaved china had so many coventries so many lead itses that had long ago lost count of them individuals lost everything and the nation faced with total war had lost more than 70 percent of its industrial capacity to make the tools and munitions of war such a vast displacement of population paralyzed the transportation systems in the confusion it soon became a matter of every person for himself as the people sought what safety there was in the interior millions that the bombs did not kill died of starvation and those were indeed fortunate who found strength in the rice bowl to struggle on these are china's orphans the orphans of the war many thousands of them today are in the friendly haven of the orphanages supported through united china relief thus began the greatest mass migration in modern history millions of people took to the roads in the hills rather than stay at home and bow their heads before the invader they came flocking into the undeveloped interior where there was no work for them where there were appalling scarcities of goods and food out of this bitter necessity came a brilliant plan and program today known all over the world is the chinese industrial cooperative movement here the refugees register for food and a job in the workshops the cooperatives set up their first meager equipment in small units in the walls of cities in caves in the hills under trees or wherever shelter could be found from the weather and from roving japanese bombers often they had to use century-old methods for lack of modern tools thousands of women rallied to spin and weave army blankets for the soldiers in the field out of occupied areas guerrilla soldiers and workers spirited tools and materials to the cooperative factories some equipment was set up as far as 1500 miles from its starting point so new types of machines were produced that could be used by the cooperatives under emergency conditions in more than 2000 of these cooperative workshops 500 different articles are made for the army red cross and civilian population thus many refugees of china who had lost everything even hope itself were blessed with the gift of work and the chance to help their country win its fight for freedom at this canvas cooperative the day's production is ready for shipment to the armies in the field the mule train starts out on its overland journey to the front lines medical supplies for the hospitals and first aid stations are prepared and surgical dressings for the wounded the red cross takes on the cargo and in the battle zones nurses bring in the wounded from the field seldom do they have anesthetics or sulfur drugs but they do with what they have here is a retreat for soldiers who have been wounded or disabled in action these patients have rejoined the fight on the production front millions of young men like these have given their lives for the defense of china millions of young men no other nation has paid a greater price for freedom the faces of fighting china good comrades for us to have in this gigantic war we fight in asia and the pacific the leader of fighting china generalissimo jiang kai shek and the heart of fighting china chung king capital city of a nation that remains after seven years of war unconquered and unconquerable three times the bombs have leveled nearly every building here and each time a new chong king has sprung from the terra and the ruin and the ashes and carried on the fight yes chung king still stands by the yangtze a vibrant symbol of the millions and millions of china who fight the good fight with us and who will keep the faith with us in victory and in peace you