Will They Hurt Us?

Inexorably, the Red pincers tightened around Shanghai. Inside the shrinking Nationalist lines, sweating soldiers and coolies dug trenches, strung barbed-wire barricades, sowed "dragon's teeth"--thick rows of sharpened bamboo stakes pointed toward the approaching enemy. If a stand were made at all, it would be made inside a belt of defense that extended 30 miles from the city's teeming center.

Within this belt ranged Nationalist demolition teams, blowing all bridges that might be used by enemy vehicles. Long columns of weary, bedraggled infantrymen plodded back from the front to take up new positions nearer the city. A young captain in tennis shoes, a grimy sweat rag at his waist, said nervously: "Kung-fei hen li hai [the Communist bandits are very fierce]." In a day-long battle to the northwest, his regiment had lost a third of its men. The captain crouched, swung his silver-knobbed cane in imitation of a Tommy gun. "They came from all sides," he said, "five, ten men against a single gun. What could we do?"

Away from war-clogged roads, but within earshot of the thump of collapsing bridges, China's peasants worked their land in immemorial rhythm. Across fields heavy with the smell of dung, water buffalo pulled ancient wooden plows. Civil war had hardly touched this part of China before. "We are a peace-loving, obedient people," said one old woman. "We are not rich. We want only to do our work. Will the Communists hurt us?"

The metropolis itself girded for siege. Along Nanking Road, through Shanghai's heart, khaki-clad troops put up wires for military phones. At the Central Police Station black-clad police cracked down on Red underground agents and others charged with troublemaking. Gaping crowds gathered to watch Shanghai's tumbrils rumble past. On a typical day, in the yellow brick courtyard of the police station, swift sentence of death by shooting was meted out to three prisoners for plotting to overthrow the government. One was Wu Shih-wen, 36, from far-off Manchuria. According to custom, Wu knelt to write his last words. He admonished his wife: "Please marry again. Do not remember me any more." He instructed his nephew: "Be filial to your grandmother so as to redeem my crimes."

Then Wu was jerked to his feet, stripped of his grey jacket. His arms were bound from behind with thin cord. He was led to a table for his last meal; his grim-jawed captors fed him a bowlful of noodles and poured a swig of hot rice wine through his lips. Shrilly Wu shouted: "Long live Sun Yat-sen!" He sang China's national anthem. Then police boosted Wu and his comrades into an open truck. On each man's back was a white placard noting his crime. Sirens wailing, the truck rumbled through Shanghai's busiest streets to a dusty alley on the outskirts. The condemned were yanked down, lined up. Executioners fired pistol shots into the backs of their heads.

On balconies and rooftops, strings of yellow fish dried in the hot spring sun. Shouting, gesturing crowds thronged around the rice shops to lay in supplies. Mayor Chen Liang asked everyone to plant victory gardens. No need to worry, he said: "The pillboxes around Shanghai are as many as the stars in the sky."

But the stars in China's sky all seemed five-pointed and Red.

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