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Our office had removed to a new building, a tall building with lifts and American plumbing. But the old office was still there, a little way down the Bund, in the French Concession, built of red bricks in a style which can only be described as Sino-Edwardian, though decked with a hangover of that rococo embellishment, which was not one of the glories of Queen Victoria's reign. It was in that office so many years ago that a dear old Chinese merchant had patiently explained to me how in Hankow the yolks of all the eggs were in the centre of the egg, because Hankow was in the centre of China. Not a little bit up the egg, or a little bit down, but just in the centre. I asked him where the yolk of the egg was up in the north at Tientsin, but he said he did not know as he had never moved far from Hankow; and, I fear, he attributed my ill-concealed scepticism to callow youth. I do not suppose all those young Chinese officers who now walked briskly along the road worried where the yolk of the egg was. For since the fall of Nanking, eight months earlier, Hankow had been the capital of China, and also the headquarters of the army. The Japanese were held up at the Mateng bluff, where the Yangtze narrows some miles below Kiu Kiang, but the pressure was increasing and it was thought that Kiu Kiang might fall soon.
Before leaving Hongkong I had taken the precaution of providing myself with six bottles of whisky, as I had heard that supplies were running short in Hankow. My information was not quite accurate. I found there was plenty of whisky, but it was a green colour, derived from the solder-flux of the Kerosene tins in which it was despatched from Hongkong. Freight on the railway was reserved for war material, and it was easier to bring up an odd tin of whisky than to find space for a case. The green whisky, it was discovered, could be taken, in the usual small doses, with impunity. Nevertheless my six bottles, containing liquid of a more agreeable shade, were acceptable. They unfortunately did not go far. I heard afterwards that an enterprising chemist found a way of removing the green colour from the imported whisky to the joy of patrons who had qualms regarding the effect of solder-flux on gastric juices.
Hankow was a very busy place. Amongst other things the rolling stock, which had been salvaged from the north China railways, was being ferried as quickly as possible over to the south bank. Locomotives of diverse size and vintage were shunted down to Hengyang onto sidings where they were held for spare parts or for...