The Great Road: The Life and Times of Chu Teh

Light on China

by Agnes Smedley

Chu Teh, one of the legendary figures of the Chinese Revolution, was born in 1886. He was commander in chief of the People's Revolutionary Army, and this is the story of the first sixty years of his life. As a supreme commanding general, he was probably unique; surely there has never been another commander in chief who, during his years of service, spun, wove, set type, grew and cooked his own food, wrote poetry and lectured not only to his troops on military strategy and tactics but to women's classes on how to preserve vegetables. Evans Carlson wrote that "Chu Teh has the kindness of a Robert E. Lee, the tenacity of a Grant, and the humility of a Lincoln." More than a biography, this work by a great American woman journalist, who took the account from Chu Teh himself, is a social and historical document of the highest value.

Genres: China, History, Biography, War, Nonfiction, Asia

484 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1956

About the author

Agnes Smedley (February 23, 1892 – May 6, 1950) was an American journalist and writer. Well known for her semi-autobiographical novel Daughter of Earth, she also known for her sympathetic chronicling of the Communist forces in the Chinese Civil War. During World War I, she worked in the United States for the independence of India from the United Kingdom, receiving financial support from the government of Germany, and for many years worked for or with the Comintern, frequently in an espionage capacity. As the lover of Soviet super spy Richard Sorge in Shanghai in the early 1930s, she helped get him established for his final and greatest work as spymaster in Tokyo. She also worked on behalf of various causes including women's rights, birth control, and children's welfare. Smedley wrote six books, including a novel, reportage, and a biography of the Chinese general Zhu De, reported for newspapers such as New York Call, Frankfurter Zeitung and Manchester Guardian, and wrote for periodicals such as the Modern Review, New Masses, Asia, New Republic, and Nation.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Though Chu was a very down-to-earth man, he was imaginative enough to realise that he stood right in the center of one of the greatest struggles of human history. Chu kept himself informed on world affairs. Consider Franco and his henchmen—look all over the world and you will find men who are always willing to betray their own people for power and money.’

Overall—meticulously and brilliantly composed/written and all the compliments along those lines/impressions. But more importantly, I need to know where I can find a fuller collection of his poems? Also a bit hesitant to give it full stars because it somehow felt not ‘enough’, something’s lacking/missing but I don’t know what? But with that ‘said’, it’s already quite a lot of stuff packed into one book considering the historical context and complexities of it all.

‘“Have you ever seen the flowers of Szechwan?" he asked suddenly. "They are very big and beautiful and so fragrant that they scent the air for miles around.”’

‘He smiled a little as he remembered—sunlight through—trees which eluded him when he tried to capture them—There were some fruit trees—and when they were in blossom he would shake the branches to make the petals fall in a shower about him. There were wild flowers everywhere.’

‘I searched among the books in the library—I found the letter which Mark Twain had written to the New York Sun on Christmas Eve, 1900—Mark Twain quoted a report—from Peking:

“Mr. Ament declares that the compensation he has collected is moderate when compared with the amount secured by the Catholics, who demand, in addition to money, head for head—Our Reverend Ament is justifiably jealous of those enterprising Catholics who not only get big money for each lost convert but get "head for head" besides—slay, slay, slay, carving a road for our offended religion through its heart and bowels.”’

‘The missionaries turned them into political and cultural eunuchs who despised their own history and culture. They could speak but hardly write a letter in their own language. After that—famine swept Kwangsi Province—slaughtered the starving and rebelling people, destroyed villages and left mounds of the unburied dead on which dogs fed at leisure.’

‘There were many Hakkas—in the south—coastal and southern regions of China. Where the Hakkas came from no one knew exactly, but it is said they were perhaps descendants of immigrants who came from north China thousands of years before. They still have a distinctive dialect and customs of their own, and the feet of their women have never been bound. Chu's chief of staff, Yeh was himself a Hakka, as were many of them. The Old Weaver who wove cloth for the Chu family each winter seems to have been a Hakka also. He was a grim old fellow with a scalding tongue who would set up his long narrow loom in the courtyard or, if it was too cold, in the kitchen, and begin his weaving.’

‘The Chu family came from Kwangtung Province in the far south shortly after the great White Lotus Rebellion at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. This rebellion, and its crushing by the Manchus, depopulated the province so that poor peasant families from Kwangtung and Kwangsi moved into Szechwan and became "guest families." Though the Chus had lived in Szechwan for some eighty years, they still spoke the Kwangtung dialect and preserved Kwangtung customs—grew up speaking both the Kwangtung and Szechwan dialects.’

‘He remembered that his infancy and childhood were almost barren of love, and that he grew up "wild," forced to depend on himself for all but food, clothing and shelter. He knew that his mother loved him—But she was so hard-worked that she found time to caress only the baby she was suckling at the moment. There was always a baby. "I loved my mother, but I feared and hated my father," Chu remarked calmly and naturally. "I could never understand why my father was so cruel."’

‘She was always pregnant, always cooking, washing, sewing, cleaning, or carrying water, and she took her turn in the fields, working like a man. Peasant women were chosen as wives because of their ability to work. Love played no role—For such were the ancient feudal concepts laid down by Confucius.’

‘Chu's mother came from the Chung family, and the Chungs were wandering theatrical people who hired themselves out as musicians and players for marriages, funerals, or birthday celebrations, or who set up a rude platform and performed rough comedy skits or ancient traditional plays at county fairs or on market days. Such theatrical people were social outcasts, they were desperately poor and were often politically suspect. “But they were very gay and happy people and the peasants loved such folk artists very much,” Chu said, smiling with affection as he recalled them.’

‘Almost all social upheavals—had taken on a religious colouring, much as had similar upheavals in Europe of the past. The Taipings divided the land, in part, and in part introduced communal distribution of food, clothing, and other essentials. They forbade the use of opium, wine, tobacco, and they went as far in the emancipation of women as they knew how: they forbade foot-binding—a reflection of the Hakka origin of many Taiping leaders—allowed widows to remarry, and gave women the rights. Despite their mistakes and weaknesses, they—lit the flame of hope, never extinguished, in the hearts of the masses.’

‘Chu’s elder uncle was an unusual man who never mistreated his wife nor ‘put her away’ because she bore him no child. Because their marriage was barren, sometime in his early childhood he was given to them as their son, and they adopted him by binding rites. Why he was selected he did not know and so long as the family lived under one roof the changed relationship made no difference. In later years, however, this adoption explained why he, alone of all the sons of the Chu family, was chosen to receive an education, to enable him to protect the family from tax collectors and other officials.’

‘Chu had heard of "eating Yunnan bitterness," but only now did he realize its full meaning. There were villages along the path where the houses were nothing but low, mean hovels where opium-sodden people, with huge goiters hanging from their necks, lived with many goats, sheep, dogs, and an endless variety of vermin. There were small patches of cultivated ground about the hovels, most of the area planted to the opium poppy.’

‘The peasants on the mountain depended for existence on their vegetable patches and on the sale of bamboo shoots, tea, and medicinal herbs. This had always been insufficient. "Banditry and landlordism have always gone hand in hand," said Chu. "Landlordism breeds poverty and ignorance so that peasants often become bandits for at least part of each year. The landlords said, 'Don't raid us—raid others.' All this changed after we began—with the confiscation of the land and goods of the landlords and their distribution among the peasants.’

‘Still speaking of that era and its aftermath—Chu said: Many men today mouth Sun’s words while betraying them in practice, but the real disciples of Sun were never afraid of democracy. He was still quick and vibrant in movement and, despite defeat after defeat, was still optimistic about the future. Though ignorant—he added—there was something fundamentally wrong—After all, they argued, the foreign powers could not have corrupted any of them had they refused to sell themselves.’

‘​​First, he would enter the French Hospital in Shanghai to cure himself of the insomnia that had tormented him since he gave up opium smoking. Second, he would see something of the coastal regions and the north because he was, in a way, a country greenhorn who had seen nothing of his country except the far west and southwest. The names of the great cities, Nanking, Shanghai, and Peking, were woven into his being but he had only imagined what they were like. He knew that Shanghai was the bastion of Far Eastern imperialism, but legends—claimed that it was a city—where gold all but grew on trees.’

‘While in the hospital his friend had brought him books and newspapers and he had read them with methodical thoroughness. A new wind had begun blowing through—the press he read was filled with reports of the new labour movement—one thing had become more than clear : the foreign imperialists attacked the party with everything ugly in their vocabulary. If this party was regarded by the foreign—as a menace to them, it was the party for Chu.’

‘He—first heard, and then met, a woman speaker who was known widely among the peasants as an intrepid peasant organiser—a powerful and intelligent speaker. She had natural feet, was physically strong, her hair was bobbed and her dark skin was pockmarked—she had magnificent eyes that gleamed with intelligence and fiery determination.’

‘No one has ever estimated the cost in human lives of the vast foreign and local fortunes wrung from the workers of Shanghai alone—wagons go about Shanghai each day to pick up—bodies from the streets. Thirty to fifty thousand—buried in paupers' graves each year in Shanghai—Others are not counted at all but thousands of exhausted workers—from factories—A pall of poverty, sickness, and misery hung over all working-class Shanghai. The city, he said, was a "hell of limitless luxury and corruption for the few, and limitless work and suffering for the many." At night he saw homeless workers sleeping on the hard pavements in the shadow of great modern buildings which their hands had built.’

‘Chu was so staggered by the news of the Shanghai—that he could not even think. He had not been surprised when—in Szechwan, he said, but Shanghai was the very heart of the —movement. Shanghai, however, was also the heart of Chinese compradore capitalism, a capitalism bound body and soul to foreign banking capital.’

‘The ports of Nanyang, the lands of the South Seas to which millions of Chinese had emigrated—to work in mines, on the great plantations, or do other hard labor in the sultry heat which few white men and often not even the native peoples would do. These were half-Chinese lands where, the same as in Shanghai, his countrymen and the native inhabitants lived in humble poverty and squalor in the shadow of great buildings, palatial homes, and bridges built by their hands.’

‘Mao was ten years younger than Chu—He was a writer of great power and insight—who sometimes wrote poetry. In both appearance and temperament, Chu was more of a peasant than—Both men were as direct, forthright and as practical as the peasants from whom they sprang, but Mao was basically an intellectual whose strange, brooding mind perpetually wrestled with the theoretical problems—Sensitive and intuitive almost to the point of femininity—possessed all the self-confidence and decisiveness—tough and tenacious.’

‘Chu came again to resume the story of his life—he was a man to whom singing was a part of life. “Until we came—the people seldom sang. Of course there were a few old mountain songs—the energies of the people—gave birth to all kinds of songs—some very simple, even primitive—but some more developed. They would be laughed at by rich people who like poems or songs about love, wine and moonlight or about the beauty of a concubine's eyebrows. They were songs in which the peasants expressed their hopes—The peasants in the mountains of Fukien and Kiangsi—made up new words to old melodies and sometimes created completely new ballads.”’

‘It was only—in the mountains along the Kwangtung-Kiangsi border that some of his gloom lifted. “Our—people cooked and ate together and at night the streets resounded—bursting firecrackers, and singing. Paper dragons danced to the light of thousands of colored lanterns and I wrote down a new song.”

Of ten men, nine are poor.
If the nine poor men unite.
Where, then, are the—?’

‘Some of the first songs in Chu's songbook read like the outpourings of men just lifting themselves from slavery. Others were old folk melodies set to new words.’

‘In the autumn—they sang the ancient daisy song:

The daisy is yellow, we are strong.
The daisy is fragrant, we are healthy.
On the double ninth we drink daisy wine.

That song was to run through his life like the leitmotif in a symphony.’

‘Loyal hearts shed no tears on these great heights. Climbing the crest of Flower Mountain, They gaze on the sea of hills below, The forests above sheltering them from the sun. Tigers and leopards, they say, prowl here. The wasteland blossoms. Refreshed in body and soul. A warm breeze caressing their faces. They recall their homes in south China.’

[Carlos Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book, rightfully considered a classic of the early years of the Chinese Revolution, along with Red Star Over China: The Classic Account of the Birth of Chinese Communism,From Opium War To Liberation, Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village, and of course the key pamphlets by Mao Zedong.

Agnes Smedley (herself an extremely interesting person) writes up the biography of Zhu De, one of the foremost leaders of the Chinese Revolution, from his birth in 1886 up until late 1945. Most of the information is sourced from the subject himself, noted down while the two were in liberated territory in Shaanxi in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The book provides a detailed account of the first Chinese Civil War (1927-37), the Long March, the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45), and the start of the second Chinese Civil War (1945-49). Given its specific focus on these key events and processes, the book is really required reading for those seeking to understand how the CPC won the support of vast swathes of the population, led the struggle against Japanese militarism (this was the major Asian theatre of war in WW2), and eventually came to power, unifying China, ending foreign domination, and achieving the most expansive and successful poverty alleviation program in history.

Zhu De died in 1976 (the same year as Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai), and remained near the top of the Chinese leadership throughout - albeit with a couple of temporary demotions during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. To my knowledge there's no posthumous English-language biography that covers the post-1949 period, which is a shame, as it was (to say the least) an interesting time. The analysis in Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China, 1898-1976 is helpful on this period, and the Alexander Pantsov biogs of Mao and Deng are also useful (albeit essentially hostile).

Anyway, a fascinating and compelling read.

[Tanroop · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Sitting across the little table between us, with the candlelight playing on his lined face, General Chu's eyes gleamed and he seemed consumed with curiosity to hear what questions I would ask about his life.
'Begin at the beginning,' I said."

This may well have become one of my favourite books. I didn't really know what I was getting into when I started it- I had never heard of Chu Teh before, and my knowledge of Chinese history is quite sparse (especially the first half of the 20th century). I'm not equipped to judge the minute details of the historical narrative depicted here, but this is absolutely still a book worth engaging with and reading. Smedley includes a surprising amount of source material (news reports, military documents, memoirs, speeches, etc.) but, sadly, there are no footnotes.

I am not exaggerating at all when I say that Chu Teh's life was the stuff of legend, and that he was at the forefront of the most momentous events in Chinese history throughout his lifetime. The combination of the spellbinding narrative that is Chu Teh's life, coupled with his intimate retelling of events and Agnes Smedley's excellent storytelling, is a joy to read. Chinese history, from the fall of the Manchu dynasty to the revolution of 1949, is wildly fascinating and events seemed to be moving at breakneck speed.

The book drops off a bit in the last 100 pages or so, and there is a sudden gap between 1931-1934. Smedley died before she could finish the book, and Chu Teh's narration drops away on the period covering ~1934-1946. That really is a shame, because he had a keen eye, a sense of humor, and was very good at situating his life in wider political, historical, and sociological contexts. Instead, he appears during this momentous period in snippets of news reports, his speeches and writings, and through the eyes of others. As a result, the closing stages of the book can feel much more like a conventional history, as you are bombarded with names, dates, and events from the Sino-Japanese War, but I still found it quite enjoyable and enlightening.

Chu Teh was born into a peasant family and a life of rural poverty but, as is fitting for such a key figure of the Chinese Revolution, strode onto the world stage and changed history. The story of how he, and China, grew in the early 20th-century is compelling reading, and well worth your time.

[van1998 · Rating 4 out of 5]

”ความยากจนของพวกเขาไม่ได้เกิดจากโชคชะตา แต่เกิดจากการกดขี่ของชนชั้นปกครอง“

- บทเรียนจากความล้มเหลว: จูเต๋อตระหนักว่าการปฏิวัติในปี 1911 ล้มเหลวเนื่องจากการประนีประนอมกับจักรวรรดินิยมต่างชาติและธาตุศักดินาในจีน, ความทะเยอทะยานและผลประโยชน์ของขุนศึกท้องถิ่นทำให้การปฏิวัติถูกบิดเบือนและไม่บรรลุผลตามที่ตั้งใจไว้
อย่างไรก็ตาม จูเต๋อใช้กรณีของซุน เคอวู เป็นตัวอย่างของนักปฏิวัติที่กลายมาเป็นขุนศึก ซึ่งแสดงให้เห็นถึงความโลภและการสะสมความมั่งคั่งอย่างรวดเร็ว, จูเต๋อเชื่อว่ากบฏไท่ผิงเป็นการปฏิวัติที่ยิ่งใหญ่ที่สุดของชาวนาจีน และกองทัพแดง (Red Army) ของเขาได้เรียนรู้จากความผิดพลาดของพวกเขา

- การศึกษา: เขามุ่งมั่นศึกษาลัทธิมาร์กซ์-เลนิน และต่อสู้กับการเรียนภาษาเยอรมัน (เยอรมัน เป็นที่ที่เขาได้พบโจวเอินไหล) เขาสำรวจกรุงเบอร์ลินอย่างเป็นระบบ โดยการเดินเท้าเยี่ยมชมพิพิธภัณฑ์ โรงเรียน หอศิลป์ โรงงาน และสถานที่ต่างๆ , เขาพบว่าการใช้ชีวิตทางทหารมานานทำให้เขาคุ้นเคยกับการใช้ชีวิตที่ต้องเคลื่อนไหวมากกว่าการนั่งเรียน
จูเต๋อเปลี่ยนแปลงไปมากหลังจากสี่ปีในยุโรป เขาหลุดพ้นจากความสิ้นหวังในอดีต และเชื่อว่าเขาได้เรียนรู้มากพอเกี่ยวกับจีนและประเทศตะวันตก ความรู้เรื่องกฎการเคลื่อนไหวของประวัติศาสตร์ที่ระบุว่าการต่อสู้ทางการเมือง ศาสนา ปรัชญา หรืออุดมการณ์ทั้งหมด ล้วนเป็นการแสดงออกของการต่อสู้ทางชนชั้น ได้ให้กุญแจสำคัญในการทำความเข้าใจประวัติศาสตร์จีนทั้งในอดีตและปัจจุบันแก่เขา

[Reza Amiri Praramadhan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, we followed the journey of Zhu De, one of China's greatest military minds in modern history. Beginning with a decidedly lower middle class background, he was fortunate to be adopted by his wealthier uncle and equipped with adequate knowledge for a civil-servant-to-be, the dream job for people from his class background. However, numerous setbacks and humiliations of Chinese in the hands of foreigners, first Chinese people were conquered by the Manchus, who set up the Qing Dynasty, which in turn was defeated numerous times by foreigners such as Europeans and even Japanese who forced unequal treaties upon the Chinese and peddled opium while encroaching on their lands.

However, this predicament did not last longer, for Qing Dynasty was toppled by the Republicans in Xinhai Revolution. While Sun Yat Sen failed to assert his authority and China degenerated into warlordism, Zhu De did his best to survive, first by becoming a right-hand of a warlord, Cai E, and then even becoming a warlord himself, a background which failed him an acceptance into Chinese Communist Party at the first time. However, his revolutionary zeal put him in the foremost during CCP's hardest times, with his guerilla tactics and stratagems enabled the People's Liberation Army to continuously evade and confound the Nationalist Army, and also the invading Japanese Army during the World War II. His legendary partnership with Mao Zedong, earning the nickname Zhu-Mao, a duet which was sometimes perceived as one entity with mythical proportion among the peasants. His star shone brightly at the early and middle stages of Chinese Civil War, until he became eclipsed by the likes of Lin Biao.

The writer, Agnes Smedley, travelled to Yan'an Soviet in order to interview Zhu De himself, although sometimes she chatted with other people around Zhu De. Laudable as it was, I cannot find myself believing everything Zhu De said, for it was laced with communist propaganda, which reality often different from real world. Further problems for me while reading this book lies within the use of Wade-Giles system of romanization rather than Hanyu-Pinyin (since this is a classic literature), making me check and recheck numerous times on who the hell the people they were talking about.

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I totally adore Agnes Smedley I think she was a truly astonishing woman and I just love the way she writes. This book was published posthumously and was unfinished at the time of her death. As such it does suffer towards the end as much of what is written is just a dry description of events of the Chinese civil war without much of a personal story to accompany them. This book is a biographical sketch of Zhu De (Chu Teh) the military leader of the Red Army for the 30s 40s and Commander in Chief, and Vice-President of the PRC. The book follows his life up to his 60th birthday (1947). He lived to be 90, and was denounced during the cultural revolution, but then reinstated. It is an interesting biography, not just of one man but looking from a Chinese perspective of the late 19th and early 20th century events. To me the earliest writing was the most interesting, it was the most in-depth. One thing that struck me was the description of the traveling repair man who visited the villages in Sichuan and talked about the Taiping rebellion, and how this was interpreted by the people. There was also talk of the oral history of the people who'd been on the long march, whose experiences were recorded, some of whom were quoted in the book. Despite being written by an "American" I felt this book really tried to give the Chinese and the communist perspective. Much of the book is based on hours and hours of interviews with Zhu that were carried out in 1937, and oftern include transcriptions of what he said. While Smedley wasn't totally without judgement buying into all the propaganda it still felt honest. It dealt openly with the problems of the time, and how futile so much of the fighting for decades felt. It was also interesting to see how the communists took such pains to talk about how they were willing to work with the Kuomintang and how they were keen to make a distinction between Japanese imperialism and the common Japanese solider, who they [claimed] they were wanting to help. I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in early 20th century Chinese history, post-colonial struggles or the early communists. It makes for an interesting perspective.

[Zeke Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Great Road - The Life and Times of Chu Teh" Great title! Mao's friend and military commander. Agnes Smedley's account of where he came from and what he did in support of the greatest leap forward made by mankind to date: the Chinese communist revolution. That revolution has been defeated, and today there needs to be new Chu's and Mao's coming forward.

[Wogie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detailed story of 1911 Revolution, Warlord era, from the foundation to the 1945 struggle of the Peoples Liberation Army.