In September 1939 a fledgling journalist named Theodore H. White left Chongqing (Chungking), China's wartime capital, for Shanxi province, 800 miles away. On assignment for TIME, White journeyed to the northern region to report on a remote battlefield where Chinese troops, contrary to expectations, had been holding their lines for months against Japanese attacks. The account of his trip through the rain-sodden Chin River Valley appeared in the Dec. 18,1939, issue. "All through the valley," White wrote, "tiny Japanese garrisons were mired in mud, unable to communicate with one another and slowly starving. When off duty, simple soldiers would sneak out of their garrison posts in twos and threes and rove the countryside looking for abandoned chickens and eggs--many were caught and killed by the Chinese. The Chinese have advanced during the war from a fourth-rate army to a second-rate army. [It] has spirit. It glows. The men are willing to die. They mix and tangle with the Japanese with a burning hate that is good." The dispatch was given a byline, the first exception ever made by TIME Founder Henry R. Luce to his 16-year rule of anonymous journalism in TIME.

White, who ably reported from Asia until 1945, went on to become a bestselling author of books about China, post-World War II Europe and U.S. presidential contests. Last spring he returned to China for a long look at the policies and processes that have transformed the country over the past 38 years. "I was free to go where I wanted," says White, "and I did, for seven weeks, with only my escort of two interpreters. I got a lot of information by just stopping our car and getting out to talk to peasants along the road: 'What are your crops? How much rent do you pay? Does your wife keep chickens?' I found I could still jabber away to a peasant, even though my Chinese had almost rusted away."

The resulting narrative, which appears in this issue, was edited by Assistant Managing Editor Ronald Kriss, who also excerpted White's 1978 book In Search of History for TIME. Reporter-Researcher Peggy Berman, who checked the independently verifiable material in the manuscript, had also worked with White on the earlier excerpts. Says Kriss: "White has a keen sense of drama and a great fascination with place. It is a pleasure to have his work in TIME once again." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.