Flee Where?

Just before his visit to Suchow battlefield, TIME'S Robert Doyle had a look at North China. There Nationalist General Fu Tso-yi, with Reds north, east and south of him, was pulling back from advance positions, preparing for a last-ditch defense of Peiping and Tientsin. Doyle's report:

Most of North China's people accepted the Red threat with wizened calm. A typical point of view was shown by a note on the bulletin board of a club in Tangshan, center of the richest coal-mining region in all Nationalist China. The note read:"For sale--Hawaiian guitar, on view at the club. Keep your spirits up by playing the above. (Signed) Honorable Secretary."

"We Will Stay." A more common attitude was expressed by a Tangshan miner in blue dungarees, driving a donkey cart heaped with coal. "My life is now bitter," he said. "For ten shifts I get a bag of flour. For 20 shifts I get a ration of coal." Would he flee if the Reds came? The miner snorted. "Flee? Flee where? To America?" A crowd of workmen chorused their agreement. "Nothing could be much worse than our life now," said one. "We will stay."

Many, however, were already fleeing. On a train from Tientsin to Peiping, I noticed a freight train headed the other way toward the port, bearing three shiny new automobiles. A young, black-uniformed railway guard watched the cars pass. "Yu-chien-ti tu pao" (Have-money people all run), he observed.

Next day I got ready to accompany a group of "have-money people" on a flight from Peiping to Shanghai. Under the curved roof of a windowless Quonset hut at Peiping airfield, 40 people huddled in the dim light around a tiny coal stove. A flimsy door banged open, and the airline manager poked his head in and announced that the plane was due in 15 minutes. But instead of the scheduled DC-4, it would be a bucket-seat, twin-engine C-46. A tall Chinese in a long, fur-lined gown plucked off his fedora hat and rubbed a handkerchief over his shaven pate. "Ai-yah," he groaned.

"I would not complain, my friend," said the manager. "You are lucky to get out on anything."

"What Next?" After the manager had left, a group of seven elderly American women near the stove buzzed with conversation. "What next?" said one, through the black veil pulled tightly under her chin. The others shrugged. On the first lap of a world tour, they had taken a week out to visit Peiping. "I understand Bangkok is nice," said another hopefully.

A heavyset, spectacled Chinese in a black overcoat with brown fur collar separated himself from the group at the stove, and paced slowly back & forth across the width of the hut. He talked readily. He was General Hu Chia-yi, former Mukden garrison commander. He had left Mukden on the last Chinese Air Force plane to get off in the last few days before Mukden's fall. His force of 500 military police was the city's only defense. What did he think of the government strategy in Manchuria? He hesitated. "Pu-tui-ti" (Mistaken), he said, and resumed his pacing.

As the group crowded up to the big-bellied C-46, a weather-beaten lao taitai (old lady), pear-shaped in layers of padded clothing, climbed spraddle-legged up the steps, on tiny bound feet. Her long-faced, worried son and daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, dancing with excitement, followed. Then came a pretty young Chinese mother carrying a fat baby. She wore a handsome fur coat; her fingers were heavily jeweled. More panicky Chinese families crowded on. Inside the plane, passengers picked their way over guy ropes holding a great pile of luggage running the length of the plane, hunched down on canvas bucket seats, and struggled to get safety belts around their layers of clothing.

"Jolly Glad." The plane swung out over the lotus ponds of the summer palace and bumped along in the rough air, giving sickening little lurches. Beside us sat a Chinese mother with a small girl and boy huddled at her knees. Though the plane was unheated, sweat poured down her brown face. Then she held a paper bag to her mouth. Across the plane, the pretty, fur-coated mother held her baby tightly. The youngster, cloaked in a red quilted robe and crowned with a tan and blue beanie, gnawed happily on an apple. The mother turned pale, then green, then she too was sick.

Halfway to Shanghai, darkness closed in. An American whiskey distributor stood in back of the luggage with his legs wide apart, braced against the plane's rocking. He grumped about the Nationalist government. "They fleeced the businessman," he said; "just plain robbery this new currency reform. I'm pulling out." He thumped a fist into an open palm.

As the blanket of Shanghai's city lights spread out below, a warning light to fasten safety belts flicked on. The pilot sidled the plane into Lunghua airport, jockeying against a strong cross wind. The plane bumped, then settled down on the runway. Next to us, a chunky, dark-suited man snapped open his safety belt and sighed. He emphatically creased the page of the pocket mystery he had read throughout the flight, and whacked the book against his knee. "Jolly glad that's over," he said in a British accent. He turned. "Old boy, Hongkong is going to look good to me."

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