A Military Assembly of Chinese women Intellectuals without Military Mobilization

It was early spring in 1938, and the chill of winter still lingered in the air. In a small inn in Wuchang, a young girl hunched her shoulders over her book blowing into her hands from time to time to keep them warm while casting furtive glances around. She was reading a forbidden book, Red Star Over China, which was written by the famous American correspondent E. Snow. Soon, she was completely absorbed by the book, which seemed to her a book about legendary figures. Among them was a familiar name of a woman, Wei Gongzhi. Ms. Wei was also from Nanyang of Henan Province as she was, and both had been students of Beicang Girls' Middle School of Kaifeng City. And what was more, it was her own father who had provided the expenses for Wei to take the entrance examination for a military school in another city. She could recall that the eggs the family used to have for breakfast had suddenly disappeared, and they all had wondered why her father's salary should have been reduced so much. Only later when she grew up did her father tell her about that mysterious risky affair. Now she was following suit after Ms. Wei--going to the front. At the time she was just back from the front line of north China. A short time later, people saw her report At the Tangyin Battlefront, carried in the magazine The Literary Front, which was directed by Mr. Mao Dun, together with a preface to it written by none other than Mao Dun himself. Gradually she was no longer satisfied by just advocating resistance against the Japanese. Her aspiration was to go to Yan'an and to write in her book about Yan'an, the mysterious revolutionary base, where a real anti-Japanese armed force was calling for her. Later, her wish was fulfilled and she got to Yan'an. Still later, she accompanied the troops commanded by Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping to the Dabieshan Mountains in their triumphant advance. She wrote and wrote as she followed their maneuvers, producing works of altogether more than a million characters. She was Zeng Ke, an outstanding representative of a whole generation of servicewomen during the Anti-Japanese War.

Women of this generation were those who had grown up under the nurture of the May Fourth New Culture Movement. They joined the army, carrying with them their pens, and books produced by the New Culture. Unlike their predecessors, they did fruitful work in the cultural field

during the war, and in the history of China they left an extraordinary legacy of servicewomen's culture.

During the thousands of years of Chinese history, the feudal moral codes for women were embodied in this motto: "Illiteracy is the best virtue for a woman." Thus, most women were denied the right of education. Women's culture, as a reflection of this background, could only be, at its best, the personal emotions and painful groans, involving only family life, expressed and uttered by women who had been brought up in rich and cultured families and had received some amount of family education. Their works were mostly scattered and circulated in private among the people and few gained public respect. The Chinese women's culture originated from the establishment of special schools for women just around the time of the Xinhai Revolution in 1911 and the May Fourth New Culture Movement in 1919. At the time, though there appeared some progressive women's organizations and independent women's newspapers and periodicals, the new culture's voice was feeble and did not attract much attention because Chinese women as a social stratum were not independent and not emancipated. On July 7, 1937, the Lugouqiao Incident took place, which shocked the whole country and the world. This marked the beginning of an all-out aggressive war against China by the Japanese imperialists, and also the beginning of the nation-wide Anti-Japanese War on the part of the Chinese people. A large number of women intellectuals and girl students joined the army and went to the battlefront. They merged their struggle for their own emancipation into that for the liberation of the nation as a whole. The new consciousness of a new women's culture represented by these women found fertile soil in this national liberation war against Japan. This not only injected new blood into the Chinese servicewomen's ranks, but also established a distinctive tie between the formation and development of a new Chinese women's culture and the role of the servicewomen.

This was a military assembly of Chinese women intellectuals without military mobilization.

On Aug. 12, 1937, the 18th Group Army Northwest Battlefield Service Corps of the 18th Army Group was formed by 33 intellectuals, who were then studying in the Anti-Japanese Military and Political college in Yan'an, with Ding Ling, a woman writer, as its director. They went to the anti-Japanese battlefront in northwest China.

On Sept. 14 of the same year, the Hunan Women's Battlefield Service Corps, organized by another woman writer, Xie Bingying, set out for the Shanghai-Songjiang battlefront accompanying the Kuomintang's Fourth Army.

Again in Oct. of the same year, the Shanghai Labour Women's Battlefield Service Corps was sponsored and organized jointly by Ms. He Xiangning, head o China Women's Anti-Japanese Service Association

Shanghai Branch, and the Night School of Young Women's Christian Association. The corps was led by Hu Lanqi, a woman cadet of the Huangpu Military Academy, and they began to put on performances in the war zones for the soldiers.

Other important battlefield service corps composed of women or chiefly of women which were active in China's various battle zones were the New Fourth Army Battlefield Service Corps, the Fifth War Zone War-time Cultural Service Corps, the Second and Third Shanghai Labour Women's Battlefield Service Corps, the Yunnan Women's Battlefield Service Corps, the Shanghai Cultural Community's Battlefield Service Corps, the Sichuan Women's Battlefield Service Corps, the Shanxi Women's Battlefield Service Corps, the Hankou Young Women's Christian Association's Battlefield Service Corps, the Guizhou Women's Battlefield Service Corps, the Beiping Young Women's Battlefield Service Corps, and the Hongkong Women's Battlefield Service Corps. Similar organizations were also set up in such areas as Nanning and Yulin in Guangxi Proving to carry out battlefield service and other salvation activities.

These women not only did such work as collecting funds and supplies for the frontline soldiers and taking care of the wounded, but also carried out in their own special manner all sorts of activities that constituted the phenomena of Chinese servicewomen's battlefield culture. The 18th Group Army Battlefield Service Corps, led by Ding Ling, started off from Yan'an, crossed the Yellow River, went through

16 counties and more than 60 villages in Shanxi Province, their itinerary covering three thousand li. Ms. Ding Ling narrated in her book Head for the Battlefront: "We marched every day. We set up the stage, held meetings, delivered speeches, put on short plays, sang songs, dismantled the stage and did things I had never done before, all for the service of the soldiers." They reached Xi'an when the Japanese army was bombarding Tongguan and Xi'an itself was threatened. They did propaganda work together with local salvation organizations. They wrote, directed and acted out anti-Japanese plays all by themselves, putting on at least 20 performances a month, sometimes even at the rate of seven performances in three days. They put up anti- Japanese posters, taught anti-Japanese songs, made public speeches and held political classes in order to mobilize the masses for the resistance against the Japanese invaders. They compiled 10 pamphlets in the Battlefield Service series and edited and published several volumes of the informal periodical Art and Literature of Northwest China. The Shanghai Service Corps headed by Hu Lanqi worked and moved around in 8 provinces including Gangs, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hunan, Hubei, Henan and Fujian, traveling as long as over 20,000 li. In times of battles they went up to the frontline to rescue the wounded and clean

up the battlefield, and in the intervals between battles they did propaganda among the soldiers, put on performances, gave cultural lessons and helped keep military discipline. Besides all this, the Hunan Service Corps led by Xie Bingying set forth four disciplinary principles for themselves: 1 Devote yourself whole-heartedly to the struggle for the country and people even at the cost of your life; 2 Work hard even under poor conditions and do solid work instead of paying only lip service and promoting self-interest; 3. Never have love affairs; 4. Share joys, sorrows and dangers with the soldiers. They kept their promises with their own actions. They often had to sleep on the ground without beds, drink water from murky pools, march in the rain on muddy roads, and sometimes they even had not enough to eat for days on end. for the first time they realized the strength of women when they were organized, and this strength inspired them and urged them on.

In the early period of the anti-Japanese War, the primary task the women's anti-Japanese organizations set for themselves was to advocate resistance against the Japanese invaders and awaken the consciousness of the Chinese women. Singing anti-Japanese songs, acting in anti- Japanese plays and speaking in anti-Japanese rallies became essential skills for every member of women's anti-Japanese organizations. The Kaifeng Children's Theatrical Troupe was set up by Wei Gongzhi, a famous Long-March veteran. Its debut on March 8, 1938, in Kaifeng attracted considerable attention from all social circles. Its public performances later in zhengzhou and Luoyang created a great sensation and received warm applause from the audiences. The Fifth War Zone's Anti-Japanese Youth Regiment had two girl student detachments, each with 150 members. They worked in southeast Henan Province with Huangchuan as their base. They taught anti-Japanese songs like "The Trilogy of a Refugee," performed short plays in the streets like "Put Down Your Whip," "The Three Beautiful Rivers" and "A Fuss Over Nothing." They published informal newspapers, put forth wall papers, and made public speeches in the streets in promoting anti-Japanese propaganda.

The first group of servicewomen in the New Fourth Army were from the Battlefield Service corps directly attached to the headquarters of the Army. Their number quickly increased from a few dozens at first to more than two hundred. They put on a play entitled Seeing the Husband Off to the Battlefront, telling the story of a country young wife sending her husband to join the anti-Japanese army, and this play brought about an upsurge to support the army among women south of the Yangtse River. Tunes from the play Seeing the Husband Off to the Battlefront could be heard sung by young women everywhere. One girl added a line to the words: "He whom I may accept as my sweetheart must

be a New Fourth Army man. For only he can be trustworthy and always victorious in battle." Another young man added another line: "If you eat the cabbage for your meal, just eat the tender part, and if you want to be a soldier, just join the New Fourth Army.

The songs put forth by the Service Corps soon became popular songs, and the plays put on by the service corps were frequently copied and widely appreciated. Wherever they went there were moving scenes of the well-off volunteering to contribute money and the able-bodied volunteering to do what they could for the anti-Japanese cause. A generous widow donated 300 dan (stones) of grain as provisions for the army, and following her head a couple, who owned a grain shop, also donated the same amount of grain.

On Feb. 18, 1939, general Xiang Ying, deputy commander of the New Fourth Army, wrote an article, "Our Women Soldiers," in commemoration of the International Working Women's Day (March 8). In the article the general paid tribute to the servicewomen of the New Fourth Army: "They are among the most active fighters who worked and fought before and behind the enemy, north and south of the great Yangtse River. They have become advocators and organizers of a mass movement against Japanese invasion, and part of the New Fourth Army's fighting forces. They are an indispensable force in winning battles."

During the war, the Japanese invaders perpetrated extremely terrible crimes against the Chinese people, committing arson, killing, looting and raping, and Chinese women, in particular, bore the brunt of the Japanese atrocities. In the notorious Nanjing Massacre, which shocked the whole world, there were about 20,000 rapings in just one city, Nanjing. In "the Verdict of the Far-East International Military Tribunal," such facts were recorded: "Most women in the city were raped, from small girls to old women. Among such rapings were a considerable number of instances of algolagnia: the bodies of many raped women were cut into pieces." Many Chinese women came to the bitter realization that their fate was tied entirely with that of their nation: they would live if the country rose up and fought against Japan, and they would be doomed if the country did not do so . therefore, independent anti-Japanese military forces, made up solely of women, were established.

Early in the Anti-Japanese War, there were two quite influential women's military organizations: the Girl Students' Detachment of Guangxi Province and the Shaoxing Women's Battalion of Zhejiang Province. Set up in Sept. 1937, the Girl Students' Detachment of Guangxi was made up of 130 members. From the very beginning they drew the attention of the whole nation by publishing the document "A Call on All Our Fellow Countrywomen": "The fire of fury against Japan is spreading to every corner of China! Rise up from under the thousands

of yokes! Rise up from within the millions of shackles! Let's defend our motherland, fellow countrywomen! Let's defend the peace of the whole world!" "Can we bear to see the miseries of our countrymen as slaves to a foreign power? No. We will live and live a decent life. We would rather die fighting in the battlefield than be raped and slaughtered by the enemy with our hands folded." "Rise up, dear sisters. Hesitate no more, lament no more and nor can we resign our fate to superstition. Hesitation, lamentation and superstition is only a road to doom.... Rise up, ardent sisters! Pluck up your courage and come out of the kitchen, leave the home, and march onto the great road of national salvation. Let's square our national account of blood with the enemy!" Their work and struggles were extensively reported and covered by many newspapers and periodicals, such as The Semiweekly of Resistance Against Japan, Life of Women, and Women of Zhejiang.

The Women's Battalion of Shaoxing in Zhejiang Province was organized in May, 1938, a military force composed of women, which operated along the Qiantang River. There were 45 members of them, divided into three groups: the propaganda detachment, the field firstaid detachment and the fighting detachment. In Nov. of the same year, the Women's Battalion took part, together with the Youth Battalion, in a night attack on a Japanese squad stationed in Wangdian. A few days later, "A Night Attack on Wangdian by the Women's Battalion" and other two news reports were published in the journal Battle Flag of Shaoxing. This attracted the attention of progressive circles at home and abroad, and made a great social impact. The Women's Battalion penetrated into Haining County to intercept the renegade county magistrate, set fire to the office of the newspaper Regeneration Daily owned by renegade elements, raided the enemy public relations squad and the renegade county offices, and carried out other similar operations. In March, 1939, the Women's Battalion received an inspection by Zhou Enlai, then the deputy director of the Political Department of the Military Committee of the National Government. In May, in an interview published in the salvation Daily, Zhou said: "What excited me most was the battles fought by the Women's Battalion. In the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies there had been instances before in which groups of women, in three's or five's, killed a few enemy soldiers, but the Women's Battalion was the first to fight battles in force behind the enemy's frontlines."