From a Delicate Young Lady to a Battle-Hardened Warrior

Among the women intellectuals who assembled to take part in the resistance against Japan, there were a fairly large number of young girls from cultured upper-class families. They exerted a considerable

influence among their ranks with their distinct rebellious spirit and their cultural accomplishments.

By the 1930s, China had changed to such an extent that girls from upper-class families could receive education and they were no longer bothered by such traditional bad practices as child brides and bound feet. But the common practice of looking up to men and down on women still prevailed.

Among the offspring of Lin Zexu, the famous national hero, there was a girl, who felt greatly constrained because she was small and frail, and often ignored and left in the cold by her mother. Every other child in the family had a talisman in the Buddhist temple, but she was the only exception. Once when she was 8, a niece of hers asked her in solicitude, "Tell me, how much rice do you usually eat for your meal?" To such a simple question she was so much overwhelmed that she did not know how to answer it. It was not that she was unable to express herself, but that she did not know what would be the expected answer by her mother which would not make her angry. Dropping murmur "I don't know," she ran away, with tears in her eyes. In her small heart there was already the glow of rebellion against such injustice. Eventually she grew up and went to school. She saw more of the world and found that almost in China's every so-called "cultured family," there was a girl who would serve as a vent to others' anger, not to speak of the girls in poorer families, whose fate was presumably more miserable. Later on, she passed the entrance examination and was admitted to Yanjing University, joined the Chinese Communist Party, directed a book- reading and discussion group, and took an active part in anti-Japanese activities. The Japanese tried to pursue and arrest her , and she was told by the Party organization that she must change her name. So she assumed a pseudonym, and joined the Eighth Route Army. Her rebellious action set an example for her two brothers and soon they also joined the Eighth Route Army. In the Jin-Cha-Ji Border Region she taught the Chinese language to an intermediate class, serving as "teacher" to many army leaders. Even now, quite a few senior leaders often recall those days when she taught them how to read and write. Later on, she became a part-time editor of the newspaper The People's Own Army while still working as a teacher. And still later she was appointed the first head-master of Rongzhen Primary School, predecessor of the present August First School. She was not aware that just when she secretly joined the underground Party, her twin sister had, ahead of her, joined the New Fourth Army in South China, and became an active war correspondent for Xinhua News Agency. She said, "At the time, I did not really understand the meaning of 'social classes." What I deeply felt was the oppression inflicted upon women by society and the oppression upon the Chinese people by the Japanese. My heart was filled

with a desire to rebel and the feeling was very strong. It was a very difficult time in the Anti-Japanese War when in 1942 Comrade Mao Zedong said in Yan'an that we would surely win the final victory. I never thought I could come back to Beijing alive. For, when I went out to join the war, I was determined to give up everything--diploma, social status and so on. What I wanted was to devote the whole of myself to the nation and to the resistance against Japan." What she gave up was not only her own youth, but also her first child.

She didn't want to tell her name. In those years girl students like her were numerous, said she, and the bit she did was her duty, not worth mentioning.

On Oct. 12, 1904, a girl was born to a highly respected big family in Linli County, Hunan Province. Twenty-three years later she wrote the novel Meng Ke and the short story diary of Miss Sophie under the pen name Ding Ling. The publication of these works was like a bombshell dropped in the literary community and "everybody was shocked by her genius."

In 1936, this woman writer, already famous in the Chinese literary circles, reached Yan'an after overcoming hardships and difficulties. Mao Zedong asked her in solicitude, "What you like to do, ding Ling?" Her answer was simple: "To become a Red Armywoman." This woman writer's choice was as novel and shocking as her novels. Mao Zedong said: "Good. Perhaps you are just in time for the last battle. Go to the frontline with the General Political Department under Yang Shangkun." Thus, she began her military career with great enthusiasm.

If a person's life could be said to be a collection of choices, Ding Ling had a better opportunity to choose than an ordinary woman. But what she chose was none other than to be a servicewoman. Let's trace her life's course, a chain of events destined for her.

As a young girl, she had the same bitter experience as the Lin sisters. When she was 12, her brother died. Relatives came to express their condolences. In her presence they said: "A great pity that it was the boy. It would be better if it were Binzhi (Ding Ling's childhoodname)." The words were like a dagger thrust into her small heart. This was the initial stimulus that eventually led her to the writing of numerous works reflecting women's life and fate.

In Ding Ling's works, the name of "Nora", the heroine in the Norwegian playwright Ibsen's famous play, was mentioned more than once. Nora rebelled against the oppression of the family and went out to seek freedom and liberty for women. But where did Nora go? Ibsen didn't give us an answer, creating a dramatic suspense for us to ponder over. In the 1920s, Ding Ling wrote of a Meng Ke in despair, a depressed Sophie, and a miserable Wei Hu. Together with these Chinese "Noras," she tried to think things out and struggled with problems. "It was tedious and

depressing just to live quietly and die quietly," she said, "and I was already fed up with it. But actually what was I after? Even I myself cold not figure it out. sophie was aspiring to something she could not quite grasp." Yes, Ding Ling did not stop her exploration for a bright future; she continued to write about poor students, ordinary school teachers, country lasses, girls in love. ; she wrote about all those

women who did not know where their fate would lead them; she wrote about how these women eventually became prisoners to their life, their fate and their emotions. with the miseries of these women in her heart, she joined the Left-Wing Writers' Association in Shanghai. Scarcely had she joined the revolutionary ranks when she received a personal blow: her husband Hu Yeping, a young poet, together with Rou Shi and 21 other revolutionaries, was killed in Longhua. Having sent her three- month-old baby to her native place in Hunan, she began to edit Beidou (The Big Dipper), a literary journal directly under the Left-Wing Writers' Association. In 1932, Ding Ling joined the Communist Party. In her works, her concerns about the fate of some individuals were elevated to concerns and explorations about the fate of the whole nation. In 1933, when absorbed in her revolutionary work, she was kidnapped by secret agents of the Kuomintang. She was put into prison in Nanjing and for three years she was deprived of her personal freedom. She continued her writing in the prison, and she was always concerned about the fate of China's "Nora" just as she was about her own fate. In 1936, Ding Ling joined the Red Army, and this act was no longer part of a trial in her exploration for her personal future; it was an inevitability in her struggle for freedom and liberty.

With a simple (yet rather grand by local standard) ceremony, Yan'an welcomed this newcomer, who came from afar with single-minded devotion. An evening party was held in a big cave in honor of her. Many leaders came, including Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Ding Ling told of this event later: "That was the most glorious and happiest day for me in the whole of my life. I was so care-free and so happy, and it was the first time I spoke before so many leaders. I spoke of my experience in Nanjing at length as if I were a homecoming child telling daddy and mom everything I had gone through." Soon, she went to the front in east Gansu Province. When a blister appeared on her foot, she would try passing a thread, soaked with oil, through it just as other soldiers did, and the next day she could march in line with others without trouble. When the troops stopped for the night and she was forgotten, she would pass the night in the stable or in the kitchen, listening to the horses munching away all night or watching cooks preparing meals in the middle of the night. In 1937, Ding Ling accompanied Smedley, an American journalist, back to Yan'an from the front. Mao Zedong again asked her: "What else would you like to do?" Her reply was: "Again,

to be a Red Armywoman." Then she was assigned to the Central Guards Regiment as deputy director of the political department. She was not quite clear about the scope of her responsibilities. She went to the soldiers' recreation room, referred to as "the Salvation Room." "Can you play the mouth organ?" the soldiers asked her. She shook her head, but she did not feel awkward or ashamed, for she was becoming one of them and familiarizing herself with a life completely new to her. The War of Resistance Against Japan broke out, and she led the Battlefield Service Corps of the 18th Group Army to the front line. From then on, she began to consider herself a "real soldier." All the top commanders of the Eighth Route Army were fond of talking with this woman writer who had come from a big city. Commander in chief Zhu De unrolled the map and explained to her the general situation of the war, while Comrade Zuo Quan liked to spin war yarns with much embellishment. General Yang Dezhi, commander of the 115th Division, gave her as a present a Japanese army woolen overcoat seized from the battle. In those days when she worked in the Northwestern China Battlefield Service Corps, she always wore this overcoat which was designed for men and too long for her. She said wearing a Japanese army overcoat was the most vivid way to tell the people what the Eighth Route Army was doing--fighting the Japanese. As she went from one battlefield to another, she put on performances, delivered speeches, and wrote articles and reports. Today, we can no longer hear her give public speeches or watch her act out the anti-Japanese plays written by herself. But when we read the articles she wrote, we can still share with her the recollections of those difficult yet memorable days. She had thoroughly fused herself into that fighting body and she wrote with enthusiasm and sympathy about the soldiers and their life on the battlefield. She not only attracted the attention of the whole Eighth Route Army for her work, but also became a person put under special surveillance by the Japanese. She had stepped onto the anti-Japanese arena armed with a pen wielded only by women and fighting in a manner special to women. Mao Zedong once praised her in a poem, "A delicate young lady of yesterday, a battle-hardened warrior of today."

The Chinese "Noras," having abandoned their homes and left behind the cities and towns that were familiar to them, came to the arid mountainous areas of China and joined the forces for national liberation. Yet, it was not a paradise here. Even a revolutionary might retain some feudal traces in him. Ding Ling did not neglect the cleaning of those traces among her own ranks with her sharp anti-feudal pen. Her sympathy never ignored the women around her, and she was pained by the prejudices and practices against women prevailing in her own anti-Japanese ranks. Just before the International Working Women's Day (March 8) in 1942, she spent a whole night and wrote an essay,

"Reflections on the March Eighth Women's Day," in which she put forward ideas she had long pondered over in her mind. She wrote, in grave earnestness, "I, myself, am a woman, and I know better than anyone else the weaknesses of women. But better still I know their sufferings. They are not ahead of the times, they are not perfect, and they are not made of iron. They can not be expected to be above all social temptations and to resist all social oppressions. Each of them has a history of blood and tears. All of them have had noble emotions (no matter whether they are eventually successful or have failed, or whether they have been lucky or misfortune-stricken, or whether they are still engaged in a desperate struggle or have given themselves up to vulgarity). This is especially true of the women who have come to Yan'an. That's why I look upon all those women with great sympathy who have fallen and become criminals. I hope that men, especially those in high positions, as well as women themselves, should view the errors of these women as connected with the social conditions. Philosophize less and pay more attention to practical problems, so that theory is not divorced from practice. I hope every communist will be more responsible for his own moral character."

The revolutionary struggles for national democracy refined and sublimated her theory on women's emancipation, and she eventually found the proper destination for China's "Noras." She announced: "There are no people in the world who are so incompetent as not to be qualified to seek their own rights. So, if women are to gain their equality, they must improve themselves first." How to improve themselves? For the first time Ding Ling put forward the psychological and cultural requirements for Chinese women besides the requirement of being physically strong. This was not a remark just at the spur of the moment; it was a conclusion reached from her own experience of blood and tears. "Secondly, you must make yourself happy. Only when there is happiness, is there youth and vitality; only when there is happiness, can you feel the richness of life, be able to bear hardships and enjoy life, and have a bright future. This happiness is not to be satisfied with the present, but to fight and keep forging ahead....Thirdly, you must use your brain. You'd better make it your usual practice, and correct the habit of not thinking for yourself but just drifting with the current,... so that you will not be taken in, fooled by seemingly sweet things, and tempted by small favours, and that you will not waste your enthusiasm and your life, and thus eliminate your worries. Fourthly, you must be prepared to bear hardships and hold out. As a modern woman of consciousness, you must be determined to sacrifice all the rosy illusions. Happiness means forging ahead in tempests and storms, rather than playing music in the moonlight or reading poems aloud in the flower garden. If you have not firmly made up your mind,

you will certainly drop out. Not bearing hardships means sinking and degenerating. And the will to hold out has to be strengthened in 'persistence.' A person without high aspirations can hardly have the will power strong enough to refrain from petty advantages and cheap comfort. And only those can have such high aspirations who really work for mankind but not for themselves." The publication of this article made a great impact in the anti-Japanese base areas. Yet what was brought upon this servicewoman misunderstanding and unfair criticism more than anything else.

Gold can never be devalued by the dust that covers it. As one of the best essays on women affairs as yet, this article still shines with the brightness of an unyielding life.

Standing in China at the end of the 20th century, we still have to repeat the same question once raised by Ding Ling: When will be the time at which the word "women" doesn't draw special attention and is not worth a special mention?