"We did not become slaves of the Japanese militarists; we shall not become slaves of American imperialists."

　　Under these somewhat disturbing slogans, I arose stiff and cold the next morning, and having changed four hundred thousand of Chiang Kai-shek's dollars for eighty thousand Communist dollars I was ready to start on my journey across the North China Plain.

　　It was the day before Chinese New Year.

　　For some days now the frost had been hardening the earth and the night before great black clouds coming from the west had brought snow which fell without interruption during the night and was still coming down as a crowd of children followed me to the outskirts of Potow's walls.

　　A mule harnessed to a Peking cart waited for me beside the mud wall of a collapsing house. A small boy, carrying a whip, went from one side of the cart to the other, fastening the traces and adjusting the harness. The mule stamped his feet on the ground as if he were cold and drew back his lip and whinnied. My duffel bag was tied on the back of the cart on the outside; my camera case and typewriter placed under the roof of the cart on the inside.

　　A curtain of interrupted snowflakes constantly sparkled in its descent to the ground. It powdered the heads of the children with fleecy covering. Everything seemed stilled under the silent fall of the snow. Save for the group of children around me, the streets were deserted.

　　A young man in the uniform of the Potow Peace Preservation Corps appeared, announcing that he was my escort and would take me to the next county seat at Foutung. He walked around the cart checking my bag, the traces and the harness once again. He looked at me for a moment, where I stood, already white with snow, and said to me: "Why not get in the cart? You will be under cover then."

　　The children shrieked: "American reactionary, see you again."

　　Passing out of Potow, we headed on a cart track directly across the fields. Few people were on the roads. The snow and cold would have been enough to keep all indoors but, in addition, it was New Year's Eve, and the people were inside paying off old debts, doing homage to the Kitchen God or laying plans for a celebration. It was a lonely day to be abroad.

　　We jounced across a great bare plain. Everywhere the land was flat, the horizon hound only by trees. The earth appeared old and worn, yet there was a certain barren picturesqueness in the leafless trees that raised their "bare ruined choirs" against the sky. The texture of these trees somehow seemed different than those in America, somewhat more delicate - little feminine, with long slender twigs reaching out from branches like fine hair.

　　The flakes fell in profusion upon the ugly brown plain until at last there was only a vast white expanse like a cloud beneath our wheels. Once, a flock of birds flew past overhead, on their way to some hidden roosting place, uttering as they flew a clear bell-like chirp; and there was something ethereal in those drops of melodious sound, which fell through the snowy silence like a disembodied song.

　　This unexpected peace which I had found did not last long; for there something so vast and overwhelming about this great North China that it assailed the spirit with foreboding. We went so slowly that hours the scenery never changed. Soon I felt engulfed in the immensity of the plain, lost in gazing upon it as one feels lost in gazing on sea. I had the feeling of being an alien in a strange world: I knew not where I was nor where I was going. There were no landmarks, no roads, not even a sun to give a sign of progress or direction.

　　Toward the middle of the afternoon, we stopped in a large village and the driver let his mule eat and drink. We entered a teashop. It was festooned with cobwebs, the dirt floor was sprinkled with manure and the corners of the room were filled with bags of grain, denoting a New Year surplus for the shop owner. Sitting cross-legged on a raised mud platform, we swigged tea out of bowls placed on a tiny table only four inches high.

　　Behind me I saw incense sticks burning, and going to a corner, I noticed a few bowls of crullers, rice and poor food set before a paper drawing of the Kitchen God. With his long drooping mustache, he looked down in silent benevolence upon the food offered him, but blinked not an eye as the smoke from the incense sticks curled up past his face.

　　I bad heard much about the antireligion policy of the Chinese Communists, but here the shopkeeper had put up his paper god, seemingly with no fear that it would be torn from the wall.

　　We started up again. Toward dusk I witnessed a strange thing. Sitting on the front of the cart with my feet dangling over the side and with my head just under the roof, I saw sudden flashes of fire, first on the right and then on the left, as of lightning, but so close to the ground that it could not be. I sat on the cart and waited for the flashes to be repeated, but saw nothing. Just then from a near-by grove of trees there burst forth an orange ball of light. It flared briefly against the gloomy twilight, then went out leaving the grove of trees blacker than before. I sat up straight and stiffened at this sight. There it was again - sudden burst of fire and then blackness. In the moment that the lights flared I caught glimpses of figures, darting this way and that. They were all running close to the ground and it was from these figures that the fires seemed to start up and then die.

　　As we drew close to the grove of trees, I jumped off the cart. Pushing through the outer trees, I saw a number of rounded grave mounds and, in front of them, two men and an old woman. In the hands of each burned a string of paper money. As the flames flared up, they threw the paper on the grave mounds. Then they knelt down on the snow and knocked their heads three times on the ground in front of the tombs. I realized that these people were but doing obeisance to their family ancestors, yet this simple ritual affected me strangely, being alien to my world or my spirit and having all the fascination of the unknown and the mysterious. I turned and went away. As we rode on, I saw more fires flaring from the fields and everywhere men knocking their heads on the ground before their ancestral tombs.

　　He grinned in friendly fashion. I looked past his grinning face and I saw behind him some large Chinese characters whitewashed upon a house wall.

　　WE DID NOT WANT TO BE JAPANESE SLAVES

　　WE DON'T WANT TO BE AMERICAN SLAVES

　　I stared at these characters for a long time. It seemed so very strange to see these political slogans in this miserable village, far from America, from George Marshall or from President Truman. Noticing my attitude, my guard smiled.

　　"It doesn't mean anything," he said. "Don't be alarmed."

　　I wanted to stay there and see how the villagers celebrated New Year's Eve and I wanted to have some fun and jump around myself, but it seemed as if I was only an outcast, doomed for the moment to meet only officials and mule drivers.

　　It grew dark, the road disappeared, and the cold crept into the cart and made my feet ache with pain. Guiding ourselves toward a fire that gleamed on the horizon, we came to the large village of Chienchao which we entered through a clay wall. There was not a light to be seen anywhere; and it was like going through a wrecked German city in the war.

　　There being no use in going further, we halted at a carter's inn. The boy led his mule into a yard, undid his harness and gave him grain. A cheerful voice yelled for me to come inside, and I entered a low-ceilinged room. In the feeble light cast by a wick burning in a cup of oil, I made out seven or eight men, peering at me with intense curiosity. Their faces seemed to leap at me straight from the Middle Ages. The innkeeper - gay old robber with a bearded chin and drooping mustache, bade me to sit down on a bag of grain.

　　Evidently feeling that this inn was not high toned enough for the "foreign guest,"my guard went off to look for a place for me to sleep. For some reason, probably not having been informed who I was, or more probably not understanding just what a correspondent was, he had told the people I was an UNRRA representative, and I was making an inspection trip to Hantan, preparatory to sending in grain and medicine. Such an introduction, I admit, could not have been more calculated to put the people on my side, and I fully expected that they would tell me they were starving and could I not help them out. Instead, to my surprise, they told me they had enough to eat. Because of reduced taxes, they were better off than they had been for fifteen years. The government, they told me, collected only seventeen to eighteen pounds of grain for each mow of land (one-sixth of an acre). Before they had had to pay innumerable surtaxes, including pig-killing taxes, drying-vegetables-on-the-roof taxes, funeral taxes, and besides had to furnish much free labor. They thought there was justice in the present tax system.

　　My guard returned and led me through the town to a courtyard where a bonfire had been lit specially for my benefit. Several young men and an old patriarch gathered there and demanded that I eat something. My guard, who by this time fancied himself a dictionary of my habits, said with some severity: "He eats only sweet things." Where he obtained this idea, I do not know, but it made little difference; for the food that was brought was a piece of salted pork fat and a bowl of greasy greens.

　　I found it very unappetizing, but seeing that they were poor and had put themselves out for my benefit, I ate as much of it as I could swallow without being sick.