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A Poet with the Northern Expedition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
Extract
By the end of September, when General Headquarters were finally moved to the Kiangsi area, the center of fighting had of course moved to Kiangsi. Part of the General Political Department went with them. The troops that came from all quarters to join up with us were very numerous, and as a rule the first thing that such troops requested was that political workers be sent to them. In the eyes of the old-fashioned war-lords of that time “political work” had become a necessary insignia of the Revolutionary Army, like the unfurling of the bluc-sky-white-sun flag. They did not have the slightest idea of the real meaning of political work, but they were well aware that the main point of difference between the organization of the Southern Army and that of the Northern Army lay in the presence or absence of this kind of work. When the Southern Army, which had an organization of this kind, was victorious, they concluded that this sort of thing was an excellent means of strengthening troops; and therefore political work became a favored child for a period. The troops which came from all quarters to ally themselves with us being many, the workers that we sent out to various places were also many. Before long all the propaganda workers in the propaganda battalion over which Hu Kung-mien had charge were sent away, and [Hu] Kung-mien himself could not escape being sent to Kiangsi.
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References
* This is the last of four installments.
1 Reference is to the flag of the Kuonmintang, a twelve-pointed white sun on a blue background.
2 I.e. Director of the General Political Department, Director of Hankow Provisional Headquarters, and Dirccror of the Hupch Provincial Government.
3 Kuo Kuan-chieh was born in 1893, a native of Mei-hsien, Kwangtung. He studied abroad in Japan and in France, and upon his return he held teaching positions in various Chinese universities. He was at one time Secretary-General of the General Political Department of the Revolutionary Army and also Chief of its General Affairs Division. Later he became Dean of the College of Public Affairs at Chung Shan University. Min-kuo ming-jen t'u-chien (Biographical dictionary of famous people of the Republic) (Nanking: Tz'u-tien kuan, 1937), vol. 1, p. 2–84.
4 This term is used to denote an older male relative of the same surname and the same generation on one's father's side of the family.
5 
tao-t'ai, a high provincial office of Ch'ing times. For a discussion of this office see Brunnert, H. S. and Hagelstrom, V. V., Present Day Political Organization of China (translated from the Russian by Beltchenko, A. and Morgan, E. E.; Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, Limited, 1912), pp. 419–425.Google Scholar
6 I.e. the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang. This committee is in fact the highest organ of the Kuomintang. Under China's one-party system it is probably the most powerful body in the entire Chinese governmental structure. The Chairman (or President) of the Chinese National Government and the Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the five Yuan are all elected by it and responsible to it.
7 Name of a high office under certain of the early Chinese dynasties. Chu-Ko Liang (Chu-Ko K'ung-ming) is said to have occupied this position under Liu Pei (Liu Hsüan-te), ruler of Shu.
8 Another name of Liu Pei. See note 9 below.
9 Another name of Chu-Ko Liang (181–234 A.D.), see also chapter XXIV, note 5. Liu Pei (Liu Hsüan-te) (162–233 A.D.), one of the heroes of the Three Kingdoms period, was ruler of Shu. Chu-Ko Liang was his devoted and brilliant minister, to whose masterful strategy he largely owed his position. Biographies of both men will be found in Giles, Herbert A., A Chinese biographical dictionary (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1898 and Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, Limited, 1898).Google Scholar
10 Festival held on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar.
11 According to Tong, Hollington K., Chiang Kai-shek, soldier and statesman (Shanghai: The China Publishing Company, 1937), vol. 1, p. 117Google Scholar, the Revolutionary Army occupied Nan-ch'ang for the first time on September 19.
12 Railroad in Kiangsi province between Nan-ch'ang and Chiu-chiang (Kiukiang).
13 A town on the south bank of the Yangtze River between Hankow and Chiu-chiane (Kiukiang), near Shih-hui-yao.
14 Liu Yü-ch'un was born in 1878, a native of Yü-t'ien, Hopeh. He graduated from Tung-sansheng Chiang-wu Hsüeh-t'ang 
. In 1920 he was appointed a major general. He at one time commanded the Sixteenth Brigade under Wang Ju-ch'in 
, later succeeding Wang as commander of the Eighth Division. After the fall of Wu-ch'ang, which he defended so bitterly, he was taken prisoner by the Revolutionary Army. Released in 1927, he was appointed by T'ang Sheng-chih to a position in the Fourth Group Army. In the same year he also held a command under Ho Chien. Later that year, upon the defeat of T'ang Sheng-chih, he fled to Tientsin, where he was reported to be living in 1932. Gendai Chka Minkoku Manshūkoku jimmeikan 
(Modern biographical dictionary of China and Manchoukuo) (Tokyo: Gaimu-shō Jōhō-bu, 1932), pp. 393–394.
15 An official of the state of Ch'i in the third century B.C. Besieged in Chi-mo 
by the forces of the state of Yen, he is said to have raised the siege by means of the following stratagem. He collected a thousand oxen, adorned them with strips of cloth, bound knives to their horns and tied greased rushes to their tails. He then lit the rushes and drove them into the enemy army in the middle of the night, following them up with a band of armed men. The enemy, nonplussed at this strange attack, was completely defeated. Giles, , op. cit., pp. 729–730.Google Scholar
16 The reference here is to Chang Hsün 
(709–757 A.D.), renowned for his heroic, though ultimately unsuccessful, defense of Sui-yang 
at the time of An Lu-shan's rebellion. Ibid., pp. 24–25.
17 A sort of roll or bun made of steamed leavened dough and eaten while hot. Man-t'ou usually contains no filling. When such a roll contains filling, it is usually known as pao-tzu 
.
18 The 10th of October (the tenth day of the tenth month), the Chinese national holiday celebrating the successful outbreak of the Chinese Revolution in Wuhan on October 10, 1911.
19 Literally, “ten thousand years,” an exclamation similar to the English expression “Long live …!”
20 Although not specifically stated in the text, probably a lantern procession was held to celebrate the Double Tenth and the victory at Wu-ch'ang. This would explain the reference to a “street of fire.”
21 I-shih, Wang
K'ang-chan i-ch'ien ti Chung-kuo Kung-ch'an Tang 
, [The Chinese Communist Party before the War of Resistance] (Chungking: Sheng-li Ch'u-pan She, 1942), pp. 22–23Google Scholar, gives the following names of the Russian advisers sent to China in the middle 1920's during the first period of Kuomintang-Communist co-operation: Supreme Adviser to the Government, Borodin 
; Supreme Military Adviser, General Galens 
; adviser to Whampoa Military Academy, General Chi-sha-k'o 
; adviser to the Political Department, T'i-t'ieh-lo-ni 
; adviser to T'ang Sheng-chih, General Tao-yeh-fu 
; adviser to Chang Fa-k'uei, General Chi-te-lo-fu-ssu-chi 
. The same author, in his Ti-san Kuo-chi yü Chung-kuo 
[The Third International and China] (Chungking: Sheng-li Ch'u-pan She, 1943), p. 22, gives the characters 
the name of the adviser to the Political Department. There is little doubt that T'i-t'ieh-lo-ni is the same as the T'ieh-lo-ni so frequently referred to by Kuo. The two works cited above are both extremely anti-Communist in tone, but both of them, especially the former, contain valuable material concerning the early history of the Chinese Communist Party.
22 I.e., party representative with the Fourth Group Army. This office was provided for in a plenary session of the Kuomintang Central Executive Committee held in June, 1925. T'ang Leang-li describes it as follows: “Special Party Representatives were to be appointed in the different [military] units; they were political officers under the Central Executive Committee, and their standing was to be equal to that of the Military Commanders, whose orders they had to countersign, even concerning purely military affairs.”. Leang-li, T'ang, The inner history of the Chinese revolution (London: George Routlcdge & Sons, Ltd., 1930), p. 205.Google Scholar
23 The party flag of the Kuomintang, as described above in note 1, is a twelve-pointed white sun on a blue background. The national flag is a red field with the party flag in the upper inside corner.
24 “A fact of fundamental importance to remember about the Chinese government structure is the Party Rule established by the Kuomintang following the Northern Expedition in 1926–28. Since then the Kuomintang has been exercising the governing powers on behalf of the Chinese people, and the existing National Government is responsible to the Party. The Kuomintang's Party Rule has been embodied in laws. It was provided in Article 1 of the First Organic Law of the National Government (promulgated on July 1, 1925) that ‘The National Government shall administer affairs of the nation under the direction and supervision of the Kuomintang.’ The organic law pf the National Government has been amended many times since, but the above-mentioned provision remains unchanged.” The Chinese Ministry of Information, China handbook, 1937–1943 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1943), p. 84.
25 Pending a propitious and convenient time for burial, it is a common practice in China to place the encoffined body of a deceased person temporarily in a suitable place, usually a temple. On occasion a period of years may elapse before burial.