OCR Text |
Show China Fights Erosion with U. S. Aid 643 rows, a missionary introduced a motorcycle-• with electrifying results. Satin-robed officials vied with one another to take their first ride on the fender of this snorting machine. From this experience began the good-roads movement in western China. An efficient highway commission today is building a network of roads throughout Free China and to Burma, India, and Russia. Wherever we went, we saw workers toiling on the highways. Graves are everywhere. Outside populous centers the countryside seems to grow little else. The land of China must support a double population and supply not only food for the living but also space for a host of ancestors. Chengtu a Center of Learning Chengtu is a great center of learning for Free China. To Szechwan have fled some twenty of the thirty-odd universities and colleges that escaped westward from Japanese-occupied territory. They are carrying on with pitifully inadequate facilities but with the largest enrollment in history. A soils man apologized for the cramped surroundings but not for his work. Such is the spirit of the new China. The West China Union University of Chengtu has acted as host to a number of these migrant institutions of higher learning. From early morning till late at night its playgrounds, classrooms, laboratories, and libraries are used by students seeking to learn and to prepare themselves for the new day in China. Chengtu was the logical center for our preparatory work. There the University of Nanking had offered us office space. I was invited to a reception by the Governor of Szechwan in celebration of the abrogation of treaties of extraterritoriality by China, Britain, and the United States. Fifty foreigners were among the crowd of guests. On the wall of the great hall were flags of the three countries and pictures of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, President Roosevelt, and Prime Minister Churchill. The Governor made a spirited talk, to which an American and a Britisher gave responses. The Chinese Government was eager to cooperate with us. For our surveys and demonstrations it provided a staff of eight highly trained Chinese specialists in agriculture, irrigation, and hydraulic engineering. Our station wagon, large enough to carry all nine of us and our driver, a trained mechanic, was specially equipped with truck wheels for bad roads. We had no breakdowns or accidents in the 6,000 miles of travel over all kinds of roads in seven months of field work. At first gasoline cost us from $12 to $15 United States money a gallon, for it was hauled over "the Hump" at great expense. This scarcity stimulates use of substitutes. Alcohol is used by some, tung oil is cracked to make a foul-smelling motor fuel, and camphor is distilled as well. In North China we used Chinese gasoline refined from oil extracted near Yumen in the far northwest. Inflation in China today is staggering. Formerly we could exchange our gold dollars for Chinese money and live far better than we could on the same amount in the United States. Now all that is reversed. The Chinese could now exchange their money, come to our country (if they could get transportation and passports), and live far better than they can under inflation in Free China. There was little rationing in China. Anyone who had the cash could buy almost anything available. I paid 75 cents U. S. money for three small pieces of paper and a little string to wrap up a small gift package. A suit of clothes sold for $500 U. S. A missionary sold a bicycle, used for ten years, for $600. I paid $3 for half a dozen oranges right where they were grown. Our breakfasts usually consisted of noodles; pickled and salted vegetables, often including alfalfa greens; and boiled eggs. In the northwest no rice is grown, and the "staff of life" is wheat and millet. We did not suffer for body-building foods. It is the white-collar class and students who are often emaciated from lack of proper nourishment. They cannot live on their salaries. I found missionaries selling their personal possessions for food. Tu Kiang Irrigation 2,200 Years Old The Honorable Chang Chen invited us to attend the official annual ceremony of the opening of the waters at Kwanhsien. These great irrigation works on the Min River were established by a Chinese engineer named Li Ping some 2,200 years ago (Plate XV). The road from Chengtu to Kwanhsien, in existence only a quarter of a century, was the first auto road in West China, I was told. As we rolled along it, we saw a lush landscape a full third of which was golden with blossoms of mustardlike rape, grown for oil yielded by its seeds. Golden fields stood out amid the rich green of winter wheat just heading and the dull green of broad beans. No field is allowed to lie idle summer or winter in the Chengtu Plain. A few fields were dainty spots of "pink clover," a legume that is inserted now and then in the incessant crop rotation. |