Exit into Sunset. Yenan's most remarkable form of entertainment was the "living newspaper" in which amateur mimes enacted' current events. Sample: General Eisenhower invading Normandy atop a human landing barge. Sugar-coated propaganda also pervaded the Saturday night dances regularly held in a Yenan apple orchard at which Mao appeared in simple peasant dress to dance with his wife, Mme. Chu Teh, Mme. Chou En-lai, or pretty Communist office girls. For these occasions, the Communists revived (and revised) an old, gay Chinese dance form called the Yang-ko. Sample: a shepherd is asleep by his flock. A girl in flowing robes enters, dances around him, and wanes him by provocatively brushing the hem of her gown over his face. In the old version, a flirtation then began. In the Red version, she says sweetly: "How can you sleep while foreign imperialists are sucking the blood of your people?" The shepherd rises, flexes his muscles, recognizes his duty, and exits with the girl into the sunset.
When the Nationalists captured Yenan in 1947, Mao was driven to wander again. He left the capital on the last day before Chiang's men came, withdrew to a small village where he set up headquarters in a straw tent. Once a Nationalist detachment came within ten miles and his staff urged him to leave. "What's the hurry?" asked Mao. "Wait until the firing starts."
For over a year he shifted from town to town, usually in the rugged, desolate mountain country around Hsingsien. By last fall, he was in Shichiachuang, the Reds' administrative center on the western edge of the rich North China plain. Then, following the Red army's advance, he returned home to his Yenan cave. His popularity among his followers was greater than ever. Everywhere Mao went, his words were noted down by breathless disciples. Some observers feel that Mao is getting too popular-and too powerful -for his own good.
Last summer, in Harbin, Asian Communist delegates met to receive certain instructions from Moscow. One of the speakers was Li Li-san, Mao's old rival, and now presumed to be Red boss of Manchuria. Said Li ominously: "Some of our comrades in Asia have been in error . . . We must avoid at all costs the spread of nationalistic Communism in Asia We cannot tolerate a Tito in Asia"
There is a chance that Mao may turn Tito, especially if Russia should use Manchurian industry for her own, rather than for China's recovery. But so far, Mao has slavishly squeezed himself through every needle eye of Moscow policy.
The New Democracy. What kind of master will Mao be to China? For years, the Communists (aided by many U.S. correspondents) have faithfully fostered the story that Mao and his Chinese are just "agrarian reformers." The story went around Washington that, during a Moscow conference, Molotov once cracked to an American: "The Chinese Communists are not Communists They are oleomargarine. They are imitation Communists."
