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 34 Return to Fancheng, 1923 A SONG Is it only today That we said farewell? The lamp shines bright— But it lights up An empty room. —poetess zi ye, jin dynasty (ad 265–420) Chester was accorded a great welcome in Fancheng. Observing his emotional reception, Inga was moved to a deeper understanding of Chester’s profound attachment to his Chinese friends. Among those who warmly welcomed him was Tung Tse-pei, who had led the revolutionary cell in Halvor’s school, Chester’s adopted brother Peter, now a teacher, and his former playmates Shi Gun-ching and Li Shih. They talked joyfully about the old days when they had chased paddy chickens (frogs) in the rice paddies, and Chester learned what had befallen them during his absence. The boyhood friends that Chester had left behind were now full-grown men. Tse-pei’s large, luminous eyes were the same, but his appearance had changed dramatically: like the others, he had at last cut off the hated queue. Like his Chinese friends, Chester had also changed in appearance: his wavy hair was darker, and he stood six feet three inches tall. Tse-pei looked up at him and laughed. He pointed to Chester’s mustache and called him Lao Houzi (Old Whiskers), Halvor’s old nickname among the students. Tse-pei had accepted Chester’s early offer to become the associate principal. He had obtained a Western-style degree at Cheeloo University in Hsinan (today’s Xinan), Shandong, and continued his revolutionary activities. He participated in the Wuhan uprising of 1911 and in the May Fourth Movement. In spite of his modern ideas and the fact that he loved another woman, Tse-pei had capitulated to patriarchal tradition and married 266  chester returns to china the girl he had been betrothed to as a child. He later told Chester that he felt compelled to save face for both families and keep the girl from disgrace, but he soon learned that his bride was as much against the marriage as he was, and the union was never consummated. Chester found that the intellectuals of China were even more active than before and had a deeper political and social consciousness. They had been humiliated by the unequal treaties and disillusioned by the failure of the United States to oppose the sellout of Shandong Province to Japan at the Paris Peace Conference. This disillusionment spurred distrust of their politicians and the warlords. The chaotic warlord struggles were still in progress, and terror and pillaging by the warlord armies were a continuing nightmare for the population of Hubei Province. The Chinese saying that “bandits and soldiers are breathed from the same nostril” now seemed particularly apt. The warlords squeezed the peasants mercilessly by increasing the existing taxes and inventing dozens of new ones. They robbed the peasants of their possessions and conscripted their labor. The Chinese warlords, like the Manchu Bannermen, seized mainly young men. Almost every day Chester saw, as his father had, men and boys roped together and being led off by soldiers to act as baggage coolies and servants for the warlord troops. These unfortunate young men received no pay and often never returned to their families. Although there were some respectable warlords, Chester thought most were unsavory and acted as if they were above the law. Their armies looted at will. Their usual method of raiding a village was to surround it before dawn and fire shots to intimidate the people, steal everything they could find, and then, often, set fire to the village. December 1923. . . . The large band of robbers, probably hungry soldiers from the warlord’s army, has been defeated now and they are on their way westwards so we are living in peace again. The poor Chinese who lived in the district where the robbers pass, have suffered terribly. What the foreigners suffer is nothing in comparison. The other night my old friend “Hsi Tutze,” an evangelist 25 miles up north, told us awful tales of the happenings of that place during the robber occupation of two days. They carried off everything in the town. The only thing in his house which was not broken was a picture of our family that Father had hung so high on the walls that no one else could reach it. It was not long before Chester saw the evidence of the pillaging of the bandit warlords firsthand. Two notorious bandit leaders, Lao Yangren (Old Foreigner) and Bailang (White Wolf), were...

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