Summary of Edgar Snow's Red Star over China

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The Chinese Red Army was a mystery that no one had been able to solve. It was a mass of hungry brigands, some people said, while others claimed that they were fighting for agrarian revolution and against imperialism.
#2 The Chinese Communists were unlike any other Communists I had ever seen. They were not like Stalinists or Trotskyites, and they did not read Capital or the works of Lenin. They were not internationalists, but nationalists who were struggling for an independent China.
#3 The Chinese Communist movement was a fascinating story that was difficult to understand. It was a story of China, and it was difficult to get information about it.
#4 I decided to try and enter Red territory in 1936. I had little to cheer me on my way, other than a letter of introduction to Mao Tse-tung, chairman of the Soviet Government. I had to find him.

Sujets

• China
• Asia
• History
• Histoire

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 08 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822539846
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Edgar Snow's Red Star over China
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Chinese Red Army was a mystery that no one had been able to solve. It was a mass of hungry brigands, some people said, while others claimed that they were fighting for agrarian revolution and against imperialism.

#2

The Chinese Communists were unlike any other Communists I had ever seen. They were not like Stalinists or Trotskyites, and they did not read Capital or the works of Lenin. They were not internationalists, but nationalists who were struggling for an independent China.

#3

The Chinese Communist movement was a fascinating story that was difficult to understand. It was a story of China, and it was difficult to get information about it.

#4

I decided to try and enter Red territory in 1936. I had little to cheer me on my way, other than a letter of introduction to Mao Tse-tung, chairman of the Soviet Government. I had to find him.

#5

I was excited to travel to Red China, which was hundreds of miles away from the medieval splendours of the Forbidden City. I had taken all the inoculations available, and a macabre cavalcade of diseases was visible in my blood-stream.

#6

I traveled to Sianfu, the capital of Shensi province, which was the western terminus of the Lunghai railway. From there, I planned to go northward and enter the Soviet districts, which occupied the very heart of Ta Hsi-pei.

#7

I went to visit General Yang Huch’eng, the Pacification Commissioner of Shensi province. He was a former bandit who had risen to authority via the route that has put many of China’s ablest leaders in office. He was married to two wives, who hated each other and refused to live in the same house.

#8

The case of General Yang was a common one in modern China. He had two wives, and he was suffering from a severe headache and rheumatism when I saw him. He was also in bad repute among the foreign missionaries.

#9

I spoke with Shao Li-tzu, the governor of Shensi, about the war with Japan. He confirmed the word of my Peking informant that fighting had temporarily halted in north Shensi. I proceeded to make the arrangements to go to the front.

#10

I had never seen a Red Army man before I arrived in Sianfu. The man in Peiping who had written me a letter addressed to Mao Tse-tung was a Red commander, but I had not seen him. The letter had reached me through a third person, an old friend.

#11

Chang Hsueh-liang, the dictator of Manchuria, was until 1931 the modern, gambling, and generous leader of his 30 million people. But when Japan invaded China, he lost his homeland and had to resign.

#12

In China, Chang Hsueh-liang won a great victory over his drug habit. When he returned to China in 1934, his friends were pleased and amazed to see him put on weight and muscle, and he looked ten years younger. He had always possessed a quick, realistic mind, and now he gave it a chance to develop.

#13

Chang had been influenced to the Left, and many of the students in his Tungpei University had come to Sian and were working with him. They were Communists. After the Japanese demands in Peking of December 1935, he had sent word to the North that all anti-Japanese students could find refuge in Sianfu.

#14

The Tungpei-Communist agreement included the cessation of hostilities in Shensi. The Reds sent several delegates to Sianfu, who helped reorganize political training methods in Chang Hsueh-liang’s army. A new school was opened at Wang Ch’u Ts’un, and here Chang’s lower officers went through intensified courses in politics, economics, and social science.

#15

The Tungpei officer, who had been talking to the pastor, came over to me and took my arm in a grip of iron. He was the son of a working-class family, and had once been a foreign-style cook on a Canton-Hongkong steamer. He had been a leader of the great Hongkong shipping strike in 1927, when he was beaten in the chest and ribs by a British constable.

#16

I met with Teng in Beijing, and he explained to me how I would travel and live in Red China. He assured me that I would be welcome there.

#17

The road north from Sianfu was extremely dangerous, and it was only thanks to the help of the Chinese military that we were able to travel it. The loess terraces along the road were a source of great fertility, but they were also frighteningly surreal.

#18

The town of Yenan, where the north Shensi road ends, is an historic place. It has been through by the nomadic raiders from the north and the great Mongol cavalry of Genghis Khan, in its ride of conquest toward Sianfu.

#19

I left Yenan to visit the front lines, where the troops were only holding their positions. I had my credentials approved by the Kuomintang, and was able to pass the last sentry early next morning.

#20

I traveled to Shensi, China, to meet with the local chief of the Poor People’s League. I was told not to move in the heat of day, so I ate dinner with him.

#21

I was now at the mercy of Mr. Liu Lung-huo, the Dragon Fire, as I learned the young peasant was called, and his tough-looking comrades. They examined me curiously and laughed at my preposterous accent.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

I was to spend my first night in Red territory, but I did not in An Tsai. I was instead dropped off at a little village that lay nestled in the curve of a river, with hills brooding darkly on every side. The slogans were chalked on the village walls.

#2

The pao-chia system is a mutual-guarantee system that was used in China to prevent the organization of peasant opposition. It was achieved by having every ten peasant families have a headman, through whom their respectability is established to the satisfaction of the local magistrate.

#3

I visited An Tsai, which was the headquarters of the Red Army. It was a completely deserted town, with no signs of pillage or vandalism. The ruins were ancient and could not have been made by the Reds.

#4

I was not to be intimidated by the blood-curdling yells of the peasants standing above me. They were only some partisans practicing, and their leader was a foreign devil. I was captured by the Red Army, and they brought me to An Tsai.

#5

I was eventually brought to meet with Mao Zedong, the leader of the Communist Party. He spoke English, and I was surprised at how soft his voice was. He seemed like a very cultured man.

#6

I was invited to dinner with a section of the Communications Department, and I met a dozen young men who were billeted in Pai Chia P’ing. They were all Young Vanguards, and they were not servants. They were future Red warriors.

#7

I was given a carte blanche by the Communists to travel in the Soviet areas, and was told that I could write about anything I saw. I was skeptical of the sincerity of the offer, but went along with it.

#8

Chou En-lai was a pure intellectual in China, and he was also a rare example of a pure intellectual who acted perfectly co-ordinated with his knowledge and conviction. He was a scholar turned insurrectionist.

#9

The Northern Expedition was under way in 1925, 1926, and 1927, with Chiang Kai-shek as Commander-in-Chief, selected jointly by the Kuomintang and the Communists. The Communists organized 600,000 workers and called a general strike in Shanghai in March 1927, which they successfully defended.

#10

The Shanghai massacre was the result of the failed uprising. The Insurrectionist, Chou En-lai, fled to Wuhan, then to Nanchang, where he helped organize the famous August First Uprising. He went to Swatow, where Red workers seized the great seaport of South China.

#11

I set out with a squad of about forty youths of the communications corps, who were escorting a caravan of goods to Pao An. My horse had a quarter-moon back and a camel-gait, and I expected him at any moment to buckle up and breathe his last.

#12

Li Chiang-lin was a Hunanese student who joined the Kuomintang. He was sent to win over Ho Lung, a leader of the Red Army who controlled a territory through which rich opium caravans passed from Yunnan to Hankow. He did not rob the people, and his followers did not rape or carouse.

#13

Li Chiang-lin said that Ho Lung did not join the Communist Party until after the August First Uprising at Nanchang in 1927. He had remained loyal to the Wuhan (Kuomintang) Government of Wang Ching-wei, but when T’ang Sheng-chih, Ho Chien and others began the peasant massacre in April 1927, Ho Lung turned decisively Red.

#14

The Chinese Communists have fought so long and so uncompromisingly because of their hatred of the rich. They have arrested a Swiss missionary named Bosshard, and a military court sentenced him to eighteen months imprisonment for alleged espionage.

#15

The farms in North Shenxi are very steep and rocky, and many of them also slip down because of the landslides. The crops grown are strictly limited by the steep gradients. There are few genuine mountains in this region, only endless broken hills.

#16

The Red Army was a revolutionary army that was fighting against landlords and imperialism. They were good to people, and did not rob them or beat them like the White armies.

#17

The Red Army was very disciplined, and they sang almost all day on the road. They had no resentment towards my American companions, and they seemed on close terms of friendship.