Carl Crow - A Tough Old China Hand: The Life, Times, and Adventures of an American in Shanghai

9. Getting Friendly with Warlords

9 Getting Friendly with Warlords Bαndit or advertising men? Thick Streaks of Ruthlessness Crow met his fair share of warlords during his time in China and found some he liked and others he thought outright bandits. He couldn't very well avoid them and, since arriving in Shanghai, had come into contact with them both as ajoumalist and an advertising agent. Crow's time in China coincided roughly with the warlord period (1 916-39) sparked by Yuan Shih-kai's death that left a power vacuum the warlords greedily filled. Crow was later to drive out to Shanghai's suburbs to watch two warlords' armies fighting during the Jiangsu-Zhejiang conflicts of 1924. In January 1925, he watched the arrival at Shanghai's North Railway Station of a group of mercena可 White Russians and Frank Sutton - the old Etonian, one-armed exBritish army officer turned arms-smuggler. They were all part of the sartorially stylish, heavily moustachioed and well-equipped Fengtian Clique Army of the 114 CARL CROW - A TOUGH OLD CHINA HAND Manchurian warlord Chang Tso-lin which controlled a t巳rritory th巳 SlZ巳 of Westem Europe.1 Chang designed unifonns wi世lmor巳 braid and sashes than even most European g巳nerals would have consider巳d seemly; and Sutton, an annaments 巳xp巳哎， ev巳ntual1y rose to th巳 position of Chang's p巳rsonal adviser. Crow met “One-Anned Sutton" several times on visits to Shenyang where he was based alongside his boss Chang who was known alt巳matively as th巳“Red Bearded Bandit" (a 甘aditional t巳nn for northem warriors - the diminutive Chang lacked a beard) by the Chines巴， the “Manchurian Tiger" by foreigners, and later as the “Old Marshall." Most foreign巳rs， including Crow, t巳nded to see warlords as a traditional part of the Chinese scene and judged them as either friendly or hostile on a case-bycase basis. How巳V缸， he noted that in his advertising business he had never met a warlord h巳 couldn't haggle sensibly with over prices and tax巳s he had to pay to put up bil1boards in their territories; usual1y business got done somehow. Crow reckoned that the taxes levied against his adverts wer巳 pretty fair and that through negotiation he never paid more than one-t巳nth ofthe amount originally demanded anyway.2 H巳 had also had some dealings with the various warlords that controlled Chin巳se Shanghai including Lu Yung-hsiang, a fonner gen巳ral in Yuan Shihkai 's a口ny， who ran th巳 Chinese city for some years and establish巳d a highly lucrative opium wholesale business. He had also met the 巳astem warlord Sun Chuang-fang, who con甘olled much of the lower Yangtze and, for a tim巴， the Chinese portions of Shanghai, as well as the “Christian General" Feng Yuhsiang .3 The latt巳r had purchased 500 copies of Crow's Compub book of Woodrow Wilson's speeches despite having previously studied revolutionary technique in a class taught by the leading bolshevik Karl Radek.4 The warlords of the inter-war period were a con甘adictory phenomenon in many se凹的. Most were vehemently anti-communist; virtually all considered themselves patriots; and some lat巳r fought hard against th巳 Japanese， often integrating their forces into the Nationalist army. Most of the major warlords5 had military training and backgrounds in the imperial a口ny and a number had studied in European or Japanese military academies, while others were more localiz巳d bandits who simply knew the lay of the land be1ter than anyone 巳lse. In other instances, warlords emerg巳d who had academic backgroun GETTING FRIENDLY WITH WARLORDS 115 In the 1920s and 1930s bandits proliferated across the count可. Ten years later the British journalist Peter Fleming traveled through Manchuria and northem China where he identified four distinct groups of bandits: 1) pseudo-political patriotic forces organised to promote a cause; 2) bands of religious fanatics such as the "Red Spears"; 3) old style bandits who survived through taxing the areas they controlled supplemented with a little pillage and; 4) bandits of despair, mostly peasants forced into lawlessness by poverty.6 Much ofthe actual fighting was fairly shambol此， such as the clashes Crow witnessed near Shanghai, but massacres and extreme brutali旬， torture, rape and pillage were all commonplace. Beheading was their preferred method of execution with the severed heads, a sight Crow saw many times on his travels throughout China, publicly displayed. If...