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THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, AUGUST 20, 1955.
ANOTHER EXCLUSIVE FEATURE, STARTING TODAY
MY SECOND VISIT TO
BY
THE
RUSSELL SPURR
The Daily Express rov- ing correspondent first went to Peking last winter. Those are his
of impressions
his
second trip, from which fie has just returned.
EVENTY-TWO steps. That's all it takes to walk into another
world. Twenty-three from Hong- kong's remotest police post to the barricaded border bridge. Forty-eight to the barbed wire barrier where the last Hongkong police- man smiles you past.
One last step beyond the young men in jack- boots with polished steel helmets and Russian
tommyguns. You are inside- Red China,
There's a lot more walk- ing once the coolly correct border guard has inspected A long your passport. roofed-in corridor leads through flower-beds to the Chinese station.
PEOPLE'S CHINA
The reserved "soft class" couch for foreigners Is neat and y- free, Youths wearing the badgy of the state callways run up and down dusting the seats, emptying ashtrays and spittoon
spittoons are an inevitable feature of Chinese lite. They're spaced down the central coach corridor. Notices threaten heavy penalties for Indiscriminate soit ting. No one dares to disobey,
It's this sudden discipline, this unquestioning obealence of authority, thai makes old China hands shake their heads in dis- boller,
No More Fun
The Chinese have always been know 1.3 a elver, vigorous but highly individualistic people, They got what they wanted by fair means or foul, but always by their own efforts.
Now as the Canton Express pauses at a wayshic station, the Chinese queue meekly up along paint lines on the platform. The engine driver halls on the fore- most line. The passengers ille quietly in through the nearest Carriage door. No pushing or, shoving; ne trying to snatch a sest ahead of your neighbour.
Here, on n sunlit rural plat- form, Is the result of tho Chinese revolut
revolution.
orchards, to nost stone watch-towers.
in the tall minimum of fittings, has been installed, together with some Croups of squatting women Indifferent enoks and half a are winding up the harvest, dozen polite little girl guides They hack into the rice with whe chaperone your "aghtseeing a sharp, fust rhythm, stacking tours of the city.
Not that there's much in ittle knots a the sheaves.
need foot
oot apart
to go far. You can see a lot from the hotel windows, My room looks right down on the bustling Pearl River, a quarter of a mile wide at this point, und alive with every kind of
craft.
Others ure threshing the stalks by hand behind "curve bamboo windshields. Some are testing grain and chiaff into the air to be winnowed by the wind.
Near
There Canton, vegetable gar- dens appeur among the rice felds, it's from here that Hongkong draws much of is fresh food.
The city merges unexpectedly with all this cultivation. A row of red-roofed workers apart ments sprout without warning out of
the fields. Next, tarred motor road.
1
Clumps of bamboo. littl pools with croaking bullfrogs persist right into the suburbs. The farmland only gives up re- luctantly,
Then there is a canal, and then rows and rows of shabby shanties and the poster-plastered pillars of Canton station.
Stage One of the journey is
ended.
Comrade Boys
socm
are sumpans by
the
hundred. They hug the river-
bunics, mostly, providing cheap' housing for about 80,000 people.
There are great waddling junks tad barges with high- windowed sterns, just like the galicons they were copled from 300 years ago,
The River
There are tall-funnelled steam inunches which would be welcome ini any nautical museum, And boats that have like floating pagodas, been rebuilt so often they look
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Down the great muddy river DISTRIBUTORS: DODWELL & COMPANY LIMITED
they go, hissing and hooting, while the sumpan women skil~] fully weave their way through
the traffic.
boats
Jack & Daphne Barker
Shameen London's sophisticated charmers
The Pearl River is the High Street of Canton. But it is also a pastime. The platform vendors have
Decorated also been tamed At a blast of about the Love All the Peoples cluster in There's
furtive something
pleasure <lozens Round the whistle, they patrol the car Hotel.
slepy The guests avoid each riverside"
of riage windows selling nuts and other's eyes.
lulund, the old European quarter. Junks and sampans on the bustling Pearl River at
oranges and sticky ice-creams.
summery clothes moody
munchers in the Strollers in Canfon,
Passengers Russell Spurr was able to sneak this picture
In
days thriudbare dining the old
hali
bargain with the sampan women from his hotel window.
would haggle with them until the train
was starting, then desperately to be minding their from the tree-lined walit, before knock down the price as the own business. Yet they strain taking a cooling trip across the Shumchun Station is # A faint whistle blast, a vendor panted after them down
to pick up the whispers from river.
The walk was once the strict the next table to estimate the come, burst of chatter on -the the platform.
preserve of
and the "Lalpuns" The corridor into China hint of things to
Now a second whistle blast business, the nationality of the their fadies. Shameen Island, Its loudspeakers shrill speakers, and the Canton
sounde u coughing The vendors fall back from the
a minute before starting. dinem.
A reaction to all the strange narrow canal, was the foreigners
separated from Canton by a paganda posters. Soon, slogans and cultural music. Express comes
Officiala marshal the mill round the bend. The cus- carriges. No more transactions ness has set in. The comfort refuge from
the foreigners of they'll be all too familiar.
able train ride over, the visitors China. whistle toms officials hurriedly check are allowed.
ure thrown into the middle of Smiling soldiers playing the ing travellers by
my luggage.
Anyway, there's no more fun
Communist accordion in the approved blast.
can it be used to it, as most Chinese will tell their first Chinese
you. The prices are fixed!
city. Glorified Russian manner.
Not the foreigners, of for transmission?"
"They The Canton Express has its
soc the sweliering two, still run spasmodically by girl welders uncasily courge. They're hustled
own staff supplying small eats, strocks full of troops. balanced on girders. Cheer- with VIP smiles into
The Chinese clergy, and some of the There's also your
a special official authoritative arned cameras? Your only telephoto who keeps topping up your cup State shops, Red flags, the entire Englishmen
police. hedges and lowers that exlied ful bus conductresses (ap distinguished visitors' wait lenses?"
grow Lo remind of (free) scented tea. parently something to being room.
Another paraphanalia of a People's De- themselves of bame, They make a quick list ond
mand up and down with encouraged), children with bamboo shoots and iced beer wave me aboard the train. The sul Another, with a red arm- faintly unreal air of controlled slights and bitterness,
watering can of disinfect-
is lined with gaudy pro-
tho
That radio.
"No," "Are those
Chicken noodles,
frightened doves and work- men doing extraordinarily comrade waiter. elementary things with nuta and bolts.
The Treatment
"The treatment" begun.
At last' - into the green form.
dimness
of
only
+
Country Scene
This man, a sort of security wood's idea of a Communist guard; is quite unlike Holly oficial. He is small and thin and more than ' little uncertain. He seems too embarrassed 'even to ask for my ticket.
is
a compartment speaker strikes up ant. come clattering 'n with
"The Railway Workers' band and an enormous pistol, Anthem," and with a toot, a
checks tickets and passports and has hiss and jerk, we are off.
shoots away the curious villagers The station staff line up at who collect at every halt to see attention as the train pulls the funny-faced foreigners. Soldiers in faded green
Even the man in the begin to file across the plate signal box stands to attention
Sweat-stained pen- among his dials and levers.
Thousands of miles of China the wooden sants, laden with bundles, le ahead. Dwindling away be-
lot
them past. hind, a sunlit hillside, a flagpole station beneath a super wearily
But I try scale portrait of Mao Tse- Girls with ragged bobbed and a Union Jack.
and not to look back; It doesn't do af A realistic rather hair and ill-cut couts Lung.
this stage. the than a flattering likeness, slacks cluster round
The Canton Express is complete
delicately stage-managed, with auspicious propaganda bookstall.
A security patrol patters wart on chin.
Its efficiency, cleanliness and That wart,
soon off across the lines into the comfort are all intended to im- five-hour you notice, appears on every surrounding ricefields. Their press the visiter during his first bust and portrait. Among Mauser machine-pistols slap Chimpressionable hours in Chinese, it is the sign of their thighs as they walk. The American-built. locomo- longevity and good luck, Harvesters, waist-deep in tive (a bit of forgotten postwar Mao may be h man of the ripened rice, look up ald) is brightly polished.
in pigtails is tinder their modern ideas. But he knows from
broad overalled girl
installed with the engine driver how to utilise ancient super- straw hats. Then back
to demonstrate the new status they go to their sickles. stitions.
of women.
FOLLOW THEIR HOLIDAY ADVENTURES...
GILES
...
senge
Now the foreign devils have
Parisian Grill
TO-NIGHT
gone, leaving their parks and Michael Boder at the Grand Piano pillared buildings. A church or
above all the aty
effort and exultation that exists behind the Bamboo Curtain.
The 13-storey Love. All the Peoples Hotel is part pecullar pattern. It is cican
but bare.
སྐོ-
raries refully.
cul-
Reservations Telephone 27880
of past For Delicious INDIAN Curries Visit the
ORIENTAL RESTAURANT
monu-
Said my girl guide: "Wa must preserve Shameen as a ment to the nationat humiliation of the of the great Chinese people."
(COPYRIGHT)
The comrade room boys called "Service Men" are willing and friendly. They
since Russlan is the main foreign speak no English, of course, language of present day China.
The hotel was built by the British. It was taken over by the Japanese an officers' The Canton Express
now
mess. They, daubed it with through about half-way
its black wartime camouflage paint journey. The sur- which the Communists haven't receded bothered to πέπονε, rounding hills have
The Communists only ap- into the heat haze, leaving a wide amphitheatre of wind- pear to have requisitioned the ruffed rice. broken only by building as an afterthought occasional hillocks of red earth. They've taken less care to make An This countryside looks like a It presentable than the coaches
well-tended, prosperous garden, on the Canton Express.
to little grey villages drowse The big Japoncse clock has smugly in the afternoon sun. been left in the dining hall, Swallows dart around the though it never keeps time, A
TAKES THE FAMILY FISHING
ON MONDAY: Air Travel In China.
19 Prat Avenue Near Grand Hotel
Kowloon,
Tel. 60655
An event unique in the history of watchmaking
The 250,000th
ROLEX CHRONOMETER!
Tabe blaming
THE ROLEX OYSTER PERPETUAL DATE. JUST, worn by the most famous men of our time... The 230,000th Rolex chronaisetes Datejus
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Facts & Figures-
The Roles Red Beet attached to a watch sherung that it has obiatnað al Dilatal Tischig Certifi cute frame at Thulas Government Thatling Shutters, with the promisitle of chronométer.
The Swiss Watch Industry Puring 1953 Produced
33,030,000 WATCH MOVEMENTS
But only 48,628 of these won the right to the name of CHRONOMETER, of this 48,628, ROLEX produced 30,555
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ROLEX
A landmark in the history of Time measurement
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