{"id":6317,"date":"2014-12-09T18:37:30","date_gmt":"2014-12-09T18:37:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/frog\/?p=6317"},"modified":"2015-01-22T00:15:30","modified_gmt":"2015-01-22T00:15:30","slug":"heroes-and-big-swords-in-shanghai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2014\/12\/heroes-and-big-swords-in-shanghai\/","title":{"rendered":"Heroes and big swords in Shanghai"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 1932 Shanghai War<\/a> produced its share of heroes, since any war needs heroes, both for domestic and foreign consumption. I just found two stories of a Chinese hero known to his foreign admirers as \u201cCharlie Chan.\u201d Rhodes Farmer, an Australian reporter, mentioned him in his Shanghai Harvest: Three Years in the China War<\/a>. <\/i>He was \u201cShanghai’s most famous rooftop guerrilla, and the first Chinese hero produced by the foreign Press. This tatterdemalion soldier in a faded blue tunic and shorts that flapped far below his knees became the mascot of the British Tommies.\u201d Charlie and his compatriots were not terribly articulate, since all he seemed to be able to say was \u201chello\u201d and hun hun hao<\/i> (very very good) when allowed to inspect a British Lee-Enfield rifle. He was, however, a master of urban guerrilla warfare, and supposedly ranged far beyond enemy lines, ambushing Japanese with his potato-masher grenades.1<\/a><\/sup> In this version he killed over a hundred Japanese before they adopted the tactic of burning down entire blocks of buildings to get him.<\/p>\n

The Americans<\/a> also referred to a Chinese soldier who they called Charlie Chan, who manage to hold off a Japanese armored car with a machine gun and a collection of grenades. In this version he is a little more modern (he has a machine gun) and a tad more defined. The Americans thought he was a Communist, which I presume means he was from the 19th<\/sup> Route Army. He handles his machine-gun well, but does not actually kill anyone.<\/p>\n

A much more interesting and articulate version of the same man turned up in the China Weekly Review. <\/i>This is a much more sophisticated piece of propaganda. <\/i>Here Charlie gets to speak for himself, (he gets a by-line) and explains that he is neither a Chan nor a Charlie, although he does not give his real name. He explains that<\/p>\n

I am not a regular army man, but a plain citizen of Shanghai, employed in peaceful times by a local concern.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He was a member of the Shanghai Merchant Volunteer Corps, which had been founded after the Mukden Incident of 1931. In this version, as at the start of the Farmer story, he is in a strongpoint on the edge of the International Settlement. He and his comrades manage to drive off an assault by several Japanese armored cars. Much of the story makes him sound like a modern citizen-soldier, motivated by love of country and willing, like his comrades, to die for it. This Charlie does discuss his habit of exchanging greetings, with Farmer’s Tommies (who become Scots, Lincolnshires, and S.V.C. men in this version) and also with the U.S. 31st<\/sup> Division. Like Farmer he relates that they (starting with the Americans) tossed \u201cChesterfields, chocolates and candies\u201d to him. He responded by tossing back some Japanese helmets, souvenirs of the battle in which the foreigners were not fighting. He also tossed them a tin of preserved bamboo shoots once, which caused quite a panic, as it might have been a bomb.<\/p>\n

This Charlie is a much more modern Chinese. He is a skilled machine-gunner, far more aware of what is going on around him than in the other versions, and almost looks down at the foreign soldiers who are not fighting and who can’t tell harmless bamboo shoots from a grenade.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Charlie praises the Chinese Big Sword Corps. These were the Chinese soldiers armed with Big Swords \u5927\u5200 <\/span><\/span><\/span>who first came to prominence in the Shanghai war<\/p>\n