An American Heroine and a Friend of China – Part 3

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Agnes wound up setting up field hospitals, building sanitation facilities, lecturing, raising money, and doing everything else they asked her to do to help repel the invaders, including a continuing stream of reports to the world.

She often lectured about Democracy.

At one of these lectures, an old woman stood up and came forward and stood alongside Agnes. “She showed she was our true friend by her willingness to eat bitterness with us.”

The epitaph on her grave gives her name and years, and the explanation as to why she is in the Heroes’ Graveyard: AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WRITER AND FRIEND OF THE CHINESE PEOPLE.

                                 Bill Harvey and Chinese co-writer Zhen Zhung, December 1983                                                                     Photo taken by the senior scriptwriter Weston Gavin

She tried to warn the U.S. they were in Japan’s crosshairs though her columns and her books and appearances.

She may also have had some impact there. From 1940 on, the U.S. suddenly began sending war aid to China, first millions, then billions – and in those days a dollar equated to $17.51 in today’s dollars.

Not just money, and the best weapons, but also warriors, the Flying Tigers and troops on the ground, all risking and some losing their lives. Needless to say China was very much enamored of the largesse and the caring of the people of this nation far away doing something like this to help, or looked at more cynically, maybe the Americans realized what was coming and was simply making the best military moves under the circumstances. In either case, the hearts were in attractive mode, not like they have been lately. People risking their lives to protect each other. Gung Ho!

Let’s get back into that mode, can’t we? China and the U.S.A. We can’t change each other – at least, not overnight – let’s accept each other for what we are and be grateful we have each other for friends and trading partners and comrades in the quest to make the whole show sustainable. We need each other’s minds to pull together to fix the mess we made of Earth.

Not to mention we all have to work out what all of us will be doing when most of us are no longer needed for work, which is coming up soon.

Instead of arguing about stuff of lesser priority, let’s focus on the priorities together.

Now that we all know it, let’s act like we know it, and stop all this petty bickering. If we don’t all work together, we’ll all go down together.

Let’s go back to playing nice like it was until recently.

We will work out our difference by civil conversation, nothing else works, everything else makes things much worse.

In the Xian Incident, Agnes had taken a rifle butt in the gut, as soldiers stole her eyeglasses. Whatever it was that killed her had something to do with that war wound. She died in London, there for an operation.

My friends and I, learning of Agnes’s life story in the early 80s, were offered the opportunity by Chinese-American people well-wired in China, to be part of bringing the two countries back together the way it had been, by making the movie of her life, in a co-production with the Chinese.

She would show the love that naturally exists at many levels between the two countries.

She was a victor for the oppressed, and a Joan of Arc of the – presently in rolling-out mode – “help-each-other-out” revolution.

Gung Ho was the magic feeling in New York right after 911. Everyone experienced it.

As you drove past another car and happened to meet the eyes of its driver for a flicker of a second you were both in it together and you both knew you both knew it.

We and top government officials went on Chinese television when we signed the first movie coproduction deal between the U.S. and China.

But then, our producer couldn’t raise the completion money. “China?” the investors asked, and shook their heads.

We will still make that movie or miniseries someday.

A Song for Today, dedicated to Agnes Smedley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_lCmBvYMRs&app=desktop

May the Center hold.

My best to you all,

Bill

 

An American Heroine and a Friend of China – Part 2

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Most of the other war correspondents were men of course. Agnes hung out with them sometimes but most of the time she was sneaking around places she wasn’t allowed to be. Chiang had shown the Democracy face convincingly to the West, but all non-Chinese had to stay within certain “sanitized zones” as Agnes called them, where the appearance of Democracy was upheld. Where she went, she saw what looked to her like a feudal society, until she came back into the places she was supposed to stay. The other journalists were not so daring, and her difference from them caused them to find silly things to say to annoy her, but were careful not to cross any lines because she was known for having a bruising right, and for being quick to unleash violence when she thought it the right thing to do.

Eventually she jumped the coop completely and ran off to tie up with the Communists, to get their side of the story. She was the first journalist to reach Mao’s Army in Yenan, at the end of their Long March which had dwindled them from 80,000 to 20,000, including women and children. You see, Chiang didn’t really do the united front thing. He had to say he would, to get free. He never intended to really do that – he would get his enemies closer – where he could grind them between Koumintang and Japanese armies.

In Yenan, she met Mao, Chou En-Lai, and General Zhu De, whose life story she later wrote a book about. The two grew close. She was impressed with the way all these people helped each other. They called it Gung Ho. Agnes had never met a group of people like this in her life. (She had met relative saints like Nehru, who had been the one to send her to China to continue the worldwide Democracy Revolution, after the French and the American models, saying “Continue the work there.” She demanded to know why there, why couldn’t she stay and fight for the independence of India? “They have the guns,” he had replied.) But she had never seen a whole community, said to be 20,000 people, apparently all behaving this way. It was mind blowing.

In her first meeting with Zhu De, she asked where he had come up with the strange fighting methods the Reds were using, that leveraged their small forces impressively. He laughed and replied that he learned it from George Washington, who had learned it from the Native Americans, and is today called “guerilla warfare”. (The term “guerrilla war” was coined in English in 1809 after the Pazhassi revolt against the British.)

She was astounded to put it all together: the Chinese Communists (regardless of their ideology) were really a continuation of the French Revolution-American Revolution-Where Will It Show Up Next Revolution. It was a necessary historical process. It was all connected. Wearing different hats but behaving Democratically with their own kind, this sort of thing was going to roll out and eventually take hold everywhere. People were going to be kind to each other, and act like good sisters and brothers. There would be bumps along the way and resistance to any change is always incredibly strong, she got it all right then, a revelation.

When Mao became an Alzheimers victim, and even before, the purity of the original dream the way she experienced it got corrupted and turned against its own original purposes. (People spy on each other and turn each other in. That’s the big problem over there. Most Chinese would be happy if only that would stop. But it’s not neighborly for us to ask them to do something different because there is a social compact that says sovereign nations ought to not be bothered by the snipes of others, such insults could turn deadly. Do not interfere, lead by example. These are my thoughts, not Agnes’. She was far more direct and forceful.)

Agnes wound up staying with the Reds to report on the war from their angle. A Western Marine officer Colonel Richard Carlson was the second Westerner to reach the Red army, and he and Agnes became fast friends, both patriots and protectors, idealists believing in Kindness, working together (Gung Ho), Democracy, Fairness, Right, Truth, Justice, Equality, Freedom, Honesty, Honor, Duty, America.

A Song for Today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_lCmBvYMRs&app=desktop

To be continued next week.

May the Center hold, my best to you all,

Bill

Follow my regular media blog contribution, In Terms of ROI at Media Village. Click here to read my latest post.

An American Heroine and a Friend of China

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Created September 18, 2020

Increasing world tensions and the upcoming election cause me to think back to the days when the U.S.A. and China were friends.

I’ve done a lot of research into the period of the 30s and 40s as a result of helping to write a script about a real person unknown in her own country but known to every schoolchild and adult in China, still to this day, although she left this world in 1950.

She’s one of the four non-Chinese – out of 10,000 – bodies buried in the Heroes’ Graveyard in Beijing.

The only one of the four to have never been a card-carrying Communist. They remember her as “Schmedeley” and their faces reflect awe and respect when they say her name.

She arrived in Manchuria in 1929 as a war correspondent for a liberal German newspaper that was later shut down by Adolf Hitler.

China was already in its own Civil War between the Nationalists, also known as the Koumintang (now the government in Taiwan), in power on the mainland at the time, and the Communists, just arising.

In April the year before her arrival, Mao Zedong promulgated the Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points for Attention, a document instructing the Red Army on tactics, method and behavior. That would be like a person of today announcing on the Internet “I am about to build an army, attack and overthrow you, and here’s how I’m going to do it.”

The Wall Street Crash happened in 1929 too, in Germany causing the Weimar Republic to collapse.

Agnes Smedley’s on-the-ground investigations in Manchuria amazed her. The place was overrun with Japanese, who seemed to be in charge. The Japanese meanwhile immediately noted her interest and made endless attempts on her life for the next fifteen years. She could not understand how this giant country would allow the little offshore island to throw its weight around even in this distant outpost.

New Year’s Day, 1929. Harbin, Manchuria
                                                           Agnes’s first day in China
                                                She took this photo of Japanese soldiers

In 1930 she ran a story based on some evidence she had turned up that the Japanese had a plan for world domination (the Tanaka Memorandum as it has been called in the West, no one has ever found it, if it did exist, but the plan existed) and were going to invade China. Her paper wouldn’t run it. Two years later when Japan invaded China her paper ran the story and apologized for having sat on it for two years.

Agnes Smedley was born in Osgood, Missouri and lived most of her youth in Trinidad, Colorado. The family was dirt-poor. Her ancestors had come over on the Mayflower and interbred with Native Americans.

She put herself through school at NYU and became an early leader in the feminist movement, writing columns for Margaret Sanger’s Birth Control Review. During World War I, she had worked in the United States for the independence of India from the United Kingdom, receiving financial support from the government of Germany.

Agnes was like that, a pragmatist, she would take money from anyone and put it to good causes – mostly to free oppressed people, especially the poor. Germany at the time was a country not yet Nazified. However, the stain of Nazism was later applied to tarnish her. The Brits were not pleased at losing the Raj, and she had played a role in that. Ironically, she was also blamed for spying on the Japanese for the Russians, even though the Russians were our allies in WWII. It didn’t help her reputation that the spy she installed against the Japanese, Richard Sorge, became known as the top spy in the world. She did what she had to do to stay in the center of her energy vortex which had historical impact on more than one occasion. As if she were just accidentally, Forrest Gump style, happening to be at the right place at the right time at innumerable historic turning points, and getting to play a role in their unfolding.

Like when Chiang Kai Shek was kidnapped by one of his own generals in Xian, and Agnes got to do the broadcast about it from the front line for CBS Radio. She reported to the world that Chiang was being released because he had agreed to put a pin in the civil war and create a united front with the Communists to drive the Japanese back to their island.

Everyone knew that she had been pushing for the united front in her columns for a long time.

To be continued next week.

A Song for Today: I Am an American

May the Center hold.

My best to all,

Bill

Follow my regular media blog contribution, In Terms of ROI at Media Village. Click here to read my latest post.

We can each make a difference

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Updated September 11, 2020

It’s 9/11. The 19th anniversary of that awful event. A salute then to the heroes of 911, New York’s cops and firemen and citizens who gave all, the honored dead and their families, the military and intelligence people who found and gave his fair due to the prime perpetrator of it all. How could there be terrorists capable of such demonic acts? How could hate and ignorance stir up such horrors?

Unfortunately we are seeing small samples of what may be the same roots springing up here in the land of the free. When a person is frustrated, and wants to do something, anything, to get even with forces that have limited him or her and their loved ones, they think of themselves as heroes and of their acts as justified by their intended end states.

The uneven distribution of wealth is certainly one of the causes because it justifies the spite and envy and ruthlessness, the refusal to compromise or admit any point to one who tries to reason with them. People want more than money, they also want respect, appreciation, and a place in the world they can feel good about. How can we as individuals do anything about this enormous precipice over which the human herd is rushing?

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In the year 2000, every member state of the United Nations agreed to wipe out extreme poverty in the world by 2015 through implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were inspired by the ideas of economist Jeffrey Sachs. The final MDG Report found that the 15-year effort has produced the most successful anti-poverty movement in history, though there is still work to be done.

There is evidence that the resources of the planet, properly stewarded, are more than enough to make everybody’s quality of life quite acceptable in terms of the basics. The fact that we have been squandering some or all of those resources of course creates a potential shortfall for some. But these are human actions and theoretically under our control.

In September 2015 global leaders met and finalized the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to continue the work to end poverty. Although many had valid issues and concerns about the UN, this organization is our greatest hope for a global communication strategy. The only way to bring everybody to the table for the highest possible good is an environment where every member state feels it has an equal voice.

Click here to read about the latest SDG report from the United Nations.

Let’s look at our own engagement with the world. For the highest most far-reaching results, I recommend we employ the concept of engaging relationships, where we all look at every relationship as an opportunity, whether we are enjoying it at the moment or not. We accept each relationship as a given, making the best of it that we can — drawing upon the wellsprings of unfamiliar creativity patterns in doing so, and pulling out all the stops. This creates the environment for making maximum improvements, optimizing all the issues together.

If not distorted by negative assumptions, we would realize how incredibly promising this could be for each and every one of us.  To do so on any scale, we’d have to decide to appreciate differences and challenges. We’d need to stop demonizing others and accept who he or she is, seeing that difficult relationships are a fine learning stimulus, and finding places in ourselves where we can make excellently productive fine tunings.

Let’s focus this week on seizing the day with all our relationships. Let’s remember to include the one we have with our self — which deserves some time allocation — and the relationship we have with the postulated One Self that is the Universe (or God, if you like), in which we are an aspect and the Whole at the same time. Each moment, let’s leave open at least the possibility that the Whole is aware of us.

We can each make a difference. With the critical mass of all of us changing our actions, we can make the 180-degree course changes that we all deep down inside want the planet to make.

We can start with engaging relationships, be mindful of our resources and our actions, and see how the ripples in the pond will spread to the ends of the Earth.

A song for today.

Best to all,

Bill

Follow my regular media blog contribution, In Terms of ROI at Media Village. Click here to read my latest post.