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

20. Tea with Madame Chiang and Whisky with Zhou En-lai

20 Tea with Madame Chiang and Whisky with Zhou En-lai Waiting for a Mystery Crow checked into the Waichupo Hostel after finding that his preferred Metropole Hotel was full. Mostly visiting diplomats were using the Waichupo and, as Crow arrived, a senior British official was leaving and he bagged the Ambassadorial Suite. He immediately met with his old Missouri News Colony ÍÌ'iend Holly Tong who took him on a tour of the city's bomb damage. Tong was now the Vice-Minister ofInformation and was considered efficient (though a little too deferential to the Chiangs for many peoples' liking). He was a committed Methodist and a member of the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia along with Henry Luce, the founder of Time.1 A secretary and 句pi哎， Miss May Fay, had been arranged for Crow and she accompanied 238 CARL CROW - A TOUGH OLD CHINA HAND him to interviews, often at the KMT's Military Council headquarters in the city, where he interviewed several of Chiang Kai-shek's senior generals. Chiang himself was in town but access to the Generalissimo was hard to get and he had been awarded dictatorial style “emergency powers" by the KMT to secure his position. The whole govemment apparatus was up and running, including Dai Li's secret police and Chiang's two brothers-in-law. T.V. Soong was running the Foreign Ministry and H. H. Kung was overseeing the government's finances and deputizing for Chiang in the Executive Yuαn.2 To complete the relocation of all the old gang, Du Yuesheng was also living in Chongqing. Crow met up with his old friend Bill Donald who was still acting as Chiang's adviser, striding beside the Generalissimo wearing his trademark dark blazer and light flannel trousers. Crow had brought a book offer from Eugene F. Saxton, Crow's friend and the senior editor at his publishers Harper & Brothers in New York,3 to Donald and another for Madame Chiang. Donald was being heavily courted by a number ofpublishers as rumors were circulating that he was working on his memoirs.4 Crow told Donald that he would like to do a personality sketch of the Generalissimo for Liberηas he was seen as a man ofmystery in America. Donald commented,“He's a good deal ofa mystery to me and I've known him for 25 years.叮 Donald， whom Christopher Isherwood described as "a red-faced, serious man with ... a large, sensible nose",6 had by now worked for Chiang for several years, despite speaking no Chinese and claiming to dislike Chinese food. While waiting to get access to Chiang, Crow carried on interviewing often with his old Shanghai colleague and former Chinα Press writer Tillman Durdin who was in Chongqing as the New York Times correspondent, along with his popular wife Peggy, who had been bom in China the daughter of missionaries. Crow also socialized with the former Shanghai playboy Norman Soong and with assorted other characters in Chongqing at the time, including the French air attaché, the former warlord tumed Vice Chairman of the National Military Council Feng Yu-hsiang,1 a Dr. Green who represented the Rockefeller Foundation and W. R. Peck who was then running the American Embassy in Chongqing.8 Crow and Tong also stuck up a curious friendship with the selfstyled Mr. Ma Ping-ho, an Irishman whose original name was, Crow believed, MacKenzie. He refused to read or speak anything but TEA WITH MADAME CHIANG AND WHISKY WITH ZHOU EN-LAI 239 hoping to find a peaceful job in somewhere remote like the South Seas (Crow supposed he was a spy). A11 swapped stories, drank at the hastily-established Chungking Club and attended concerts put on by troops of Chinese Boy Scouts who sang medleys of popular tunes, including The Song 01 the Guerrillas and The Air Raid That Failed Crow spent two hot summer months in Chongqing in 1939, a time of constant air-raids over the city and b1ackouts. He was forced to flee to a bomb shelter on numerous occasions, where he passed the time listening to the wire1ess and the radio shows of Lowe11 Thomas, the pioneering American radio reporter who later followed US troops throughout the Second World War, or killing time with the French delegate 仕om the League ofNations, René Cassin,ll who was visiting the city. Crow spoke no French, and...