Don's Reviews > Destination Chungking

A novelised account of the author's experiences during the Sino-Japanese war in the 1930s. There's a love story at the heart of it, with Pao, a playmate from childhood years in Beijing (Peking in this book), encountered as an adult during the turbulent years when China was torn apart by the factional activities of warlords. Pao has by now become a militant of the Kuomintang and has been selected for military training in England. Han decides to serve her country as a nurse midwife and also has opportunities to study for this position in the same country.

They return to China in 1938, arriving in Hong Kong but en route to the provisional capital of Nationalist China - Chungking, located among the mountains of Szechwan. The chapters follow their journey, firstly to Hankow, a part of the region that also included Wuhan. Han dwells on Chinese scenes, including her own marriage to Pao on arriving in the city, and the festivities that follow. But the Japanese air forces are raiding the city and it is clear that it will shortly fall to their army. Pao is attached to the military central staff and moves in the orbit of Chaing Kai-shek, who at this time she clearly idolises along with this wife, Chaing Soong Mei-ling.

The privations of the retreat through China, moving by plane and road journeys through Nanyu and Hengshen are vividly described. Japanese air raids terrorise the stages of the travel and they move with a vast crowd of refugees who are in competition with one another for food and shelter. Han is called on to provide services as a nurse and midwife, operating in squalid conditions. Temples and monasteries provide accommodation on occasion and the serenity and ancient routines of Buddhist worship contrast with the horrors of war.

As well as big the capital of the beleaguered Chinese Republic, Chungking is also Han's ancestral home and the residence of a large branch of her family. She spends pages explaining Chinese family relations, with its pyramids of second uncles and third aunts, and the significance of the honour the dead generations continuing to hold for the living generation. But this is still the backdrop to a ruthless war that has followed her and her husband into the heart of China.

The story hints at political tensions in the republican camp, with groups of young 'intellectuals' declaring themselves in support of the Communist resistance being waged in provinces to the north. Han professes herself indifferent to these disputes, on the grounds that as long as they fought for a free China it was fine with her. Her husband, however, is a KMT loyalist staunch in his support of the Generalissimo. No mention is made of the Xi'an Incident, which had taken place in 1936, just prior to the period covered by this book, when Chaing was seized by his own officers and compelled to cease his military action against the Communists (ostensibly allies since an agreement in 1935) and concentrate on fighting the Japanese. It was in the subsequent civil war between the Nationalist and Communists that her husband died in action. Whatever the extent of her affections, she became a firm supporter of CCP rule and the leadership of Mao Zedong.