The roads that lead into the Walled City of Yenan are two-thousand-year-old trails used by the descendants, both man and beast, of those earliest travellers. Both inside and out of the city, little has changed. The men driving the camel caravans pad softly through the dust, their animals heavily laden with burdens of fur and other wares to be marketed in the city. They still practice the age-old custom of putting a mask on the lead animal’s head, to drive away the evil spirits. Water carriers, after dragging great buckets of the muddy liquid from the river, chant their endless “water! water!” as they go from cave to cave in the time-honored manner. Food vendors, squatting in the dusty lanes cooking bits of lamb and pork, roots and herbs over tiny charcoal braziers, cry out shrilly to the passers-by, eating occasionally from the pot with their grimy fingers. Half-naked babies crawl nearby, whimpering to their mothers, who pacify them by giving them sweetened tree bark on which to chew. Donkeys, heavily laden, and round Mongolian ponies jostle dog carts and belabored oxen. Everywhere, cotton clad coolies, bowed beneath huge bales of firewood, coal and charcoal, shuffle along the dusty streets. For, alas, although the rickshaw and pedicab or bicycle rickshaw has been banned as an occupation beneath the dignity of man, the older use of man as a beast of burden has to be accepted. For the very poor, there is nothing else to take his place. This, then, was Yenan in 1946. Now that the Communists have won China and moved from the mud caves to the glamorous palaces of Peking, it will be interesting to watch their actions. Will they be able to carry out their plan of communizing the entire country? And how long will this take? Will China remain China for the Chinese or, for the first time in nearly five thousand years, will the once free peoples of this basically democratic country be hopelessly enthralled by the yoke of tyranny? The Chinese have a quality that has distinguished them. This quality is patience. The Communists too have patience, but only up to a point. Beyond that they use force to accomplish their ends. There are literally hundreds of languages spoken in China—each province speaks a different dialect. Moreover, aside from travel between major cities, there is relatively little transportation and practically no communication between smaller cities in the interior. In view of these facts, is it not possible that the Russians will find their progress slow? Will the Chinese absorb the Soviets as they did the Huns, the Mongols and the Tartars? Time alone will give us the answers to these questions. Time alone will prove the importance of the incubation period spent in Yenan, and whether or not it was worth the sacrifices made by the Reds. The die is cast. From it we shall learn what the future holds for Asia, for Europe, and perhaps for ourselves as well. FOOTNOTES: