Everlasting Year

. . . And the ravens brought him [Elijah'] bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook.

I Kings 17:6

The few Christian survivors of the weird, 18-month Communist siege of the Chinese walled city of Yungnien were convinced this week that the airplane would never replace the raven as a satisfactory instrument for airborne delivery. For a year Yungnien's dwindling population had been perilously supplied by the Nationalist Government. Great, 60-pound loaves of unleavened bread and cases of canned fish, pitched from low-flying aircraft, had warded off starvation, but they had also: 1) punched gaping holes in almost every roof; 2) leveled some dwellings by direct "hits" on the center beams; 3) killed at least 22 people.

An UNRRA observer reported: "Yungnien resembles a city that has been subjected to an air raid. Debris, broken tiles and brick are strewn over the roadside, with telephone lines down. . . . Negotiations are in progress with the National Government for the cost of reparations. . . . The Roman Catholic Church and the buildings on the property in which we were residing have been 'bombed' 38 times. . . . One large package of dried fish plowed through the roof and landed on the pastor's bed. . . ."

Ancient Yungnien, 200 miles south of Peiping in Hopeh Province, had weathered 13 centuries of Mongol, Tartar and Manchu invasion before it began crumbling under the rain of friendly bread. The Japanese, who had occupied the city, abandoned its 35,000 citizens in August 1945 to a ragtag puppet garrison, which was quickly adopted--but not reinforced --by the Nationalist Government. When Chinese Communist forces neared, the garrison breached the banks of the nearby Fu Yang River and turned Yungnien into a Nationalist fortress in a vast, Red-bordered lake.

The city's population withered, but the garrison stood fast. A year ago the Communists attacked across the lake's frozen surface, were repulsed in a savage, three-day battle when the ice broke under them. After that, Yungnien boatmen chopped out a wide moat. The Communists sat tight at the artificial lake's boat approaches, and inside Yungnien the stores of grain ran out. Deficiency diseases appeared, and the city swarmed with germ-spreading vermin.

The people chopped up deserted houses and furniture for firewood, ate reed stalks until the planes began showering them with mixed (and heavy) blessings. Once, under an UNRRA truce, the Communists let 300,000 catties (200 tons) of millet and corn go into the city. Just as distribution was about to start, Nationalist airplanes arrived with more loaves and canned fishes, smashed several communal kitchens and sent grainbowls, chopsticks and people flying.

But last week the 6,000-odd old men, old women and young children who survived (at least 6,000 others had starved, most youths had escaped) had hope at last. Nationalist troops were advancing into the area, might soon lift the long siege. To Yungnien elders, looking fearfully toward the skies, it seemed about time. Between Communist mortars and Nationalist loaves, they had long ago lost pride in the literal translation of Yungnien's honored name: "Everlasting Year."

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