Why Go to China: Reminiscences of China, 1923-1950

Author: (Australia) Fitzgerald
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-07-01
Features: Please read the excerpt: In the summer of 1917, I was fifteen years old and studying at a public school—Crawford School. There was an incident that happened then. At the time, it seemed trivial, but it became a turning point in my life, guiding me in a direction that remained unchanged for the rest of my life. Here’s what happened: Every summer vacation, I had the leisure and opportunity to read The Times. During that summer, perhaps the Western Front was relatively calm, with no events worth spending energy on. However, regardless, September 10th to 13th, 1917, were days I would never forget. Those days, The Times published two articles reporting on a seemingly unremarkable event happening on the other side of the world—the restoration of the deposed Qing Emperor. The restoration farce was short-lived, lasting less than two weeks from July 1st to 12th. This farce was confined to Beijing and was masterminded and carried out by the warlord Zhang Xun. Zhang Xun, despite being illiterate, was infamous for his cruelty and reactionary views. He forbade his subordinates from shaving their queues, viewing it as an act of disloyalty to the Qing Dynasty. He himself kept a long queue. In the Republican army, his few colleagues who still possessed some education led troops to surround Beijing and occupied the city on July 12th. Without a doubt, these men were cut from the same cloth as Zhang Xun, but none of them wanted Zhang Xun to seize the opportunity to become the political leader of a war-torn China. So, they. The Times provided an in-depth report on this event, but for me, it was completely unfamiliar. I knew that in 1912 (should be 1911, translator’s note), China had experienced a revolution against monarchy, but at that time, I was obsessed with the Balkan states and their wars, and had never read any books or newspapers about China. It wasn’t a field of interest for me. The articles in The Times completely changed my interests. On the other side of the world, there existed a vast and fascinating historical world that I was completely unaware of, a world that the school authorities disapproved of and therefore did not include in the curriculum. As for the school’s history courses, China barely existed beyond a biased and inaccurate account of the Opium War and the Boxer Rebellion. In reality, compared to the Balkan states, China was a distant, mysterious, and endlessly intriguing country. In my mind, the Balkan states, though not entirely forgotten, had. China was the main target I should strive to study. It was from the day I finished reading those two articles in The Times that I began searching for books about China in my father’s library.