Defeat

It had been the Year of the Rat--and the year of the Communists. In the Chinese calendar, the old year stood for misfortune and deceit. A few surreptitious firecrackers, still forbidden under martial law, last week heralded the New Year of the Ox, which signified hard work and persistence. In present-day China, inevitably, it also signified sorrow and loss.

Communist armies stood outside Nanking last week. Nationalist troops gave no sign of preparing to defend the Yangtze. Nanking's sprawling government buildings were almost empty. A coolie, asleep in a ministerial chair, opened one eye and told a stray English caller: "Minister, he gone two days now. Not know where."

Acting President Li Tsung-jen made a gallant gesture: with the Reds only a few miles away, he gave a brilliant reception for Nanking's foreign diplomatic corps. The city was feverish with people in flight. Its main street swarmed with donkey carts, pedicabs, rickshas swaying under high-piled loads of furniture, straw baskets, boxes and bundles. In the railway station, refugees spent their New Year's Eve stretched out on piles of miserable baggage, waiting for trains that did not come.

The Polite Cops. Nanking people who remained tried to celebrate the New Year as best they could. In the back rooms of their stores, shopkeepers lit candles on their red altars for ceremonial offerings to the gods. Barbershops were doing a rush business, and fortune tellers were so sought after that they made appointments days in advance. Nanking's miserable colony of refugees from Communist areas was sprinkled with red paper signs asking health & wealth from the gods. An old man who had fled Suchow three months ago tapped tobacco from some cigarette butts into his pipe and said: "At home in Suchow I would be burning incense to the gods. Now look at me."

Peiping, which General Fu Tso-yi had surrendered to the Reds last fortnight, was nervously expecting the Communists to take over. Anti-Communist signs had been hastily removed from walls; Communist proclamations appeared mysteriously instead. Policemen were especially polite--anyone in the streets might be a Red spy. Out of the open city gates, disarmed Nationalist troops marched by the thousands.

A few days later, 20,000 smartly uniformed Communist troops marched in, with two brass bands. They had left their Russian trucks outside the city, displaying only the U.S. ones which they had captured from Chiang's armies. Picked Nationalist soldiers grimly guarded the Reds' line of march. Beneath pictures of Communist Boss Mao Tse-tung (none of Joseph Stalin), sound trucks blared: "Long live the liberation!" Crowds watched the Reds in silence.

Until the Communists came, Peiping tried to make the best of the New Year. Shops on Lantern Street were crammed with New Year's lanterns--paper lions, brilliant green rabbits, yellow tigers. For the children, there were toy swords and whistling yo-yos. "I don't know if people will have money to buy them all," said one shopkeeper, "but we felt like making them anyway. We have peace now."

The Last Sentinels. But China did not yet have peace. The Reds, who had earlier agreed to negotiations, were making the most of victory. Acting President Li, in Nanking, sent an urgent personal appeal to Communist Boss Mao Tse-tung. The victor let the vanquished dangle. The Communist radio broadcast a statement that there could be no peace before the government had demonstrated its "sincerity" by handing over "war criminals" to the Communists: "Chiang Kai-shek is especially important. The said criminal has now fled and may very possibly go abroad to hide beneath the cloak of American and British imperialism. You must act swiftly to arrest this criminal." Chiang Kai-shek was staying in his native village of Fenghua, from which he had set out 43 years ago to fight for China's freedom.

Hong Kong, the British crown colony, was the only place in China last week that seemed unaffected by the tragedy of China's fall. The streets were crowded with shiny Cadillacs and Rolls-Royces. The city's overflowing stores were guarded by armed Sikh policemen with greying beards, the last scattered sentinels of the West's past day in Asia. In Hong Kong hotels, Britons still dressed for dinner.

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