A Description of the Chinese

One the subject of national character, here is an interesting passage about the Chinese from a book that was published in 1942! It's Han Suyin's Destination Chungking.

 

It is not strange that in a time of governmental impotence such opportunists set up each his own sphere of dominion and fought, each with his neighbour, to extend his sovereignty. What is strange and a matter of admiration and wonder is that, throughout the era of the warlords, China still considered herself one nation - was one nation, undivided in spirit. Her people were united as a people. Except in time of active fighting in some limited area, people passed freely from one region to another, and education spread, and gradually the idea of a Republic of China penetrated past all barrier and through all classes of society. So strong was this inner consciousness of "one people under heaven", as the old Chinese proverb states it, that even the most despotic of the warlords paid their respects to it. Some kind of national government persisted for diplomatic and educational purposes. No warlord ever seceded from China. Each still considered his private kingdom as a section of one nation, to be united politically in good time (preferably under himself as emperor or the equivalent). And regardless of the rivalries of her petty masters, China - the people - remained unperturbed by any sectional hatred, consciously one race, one people, under a government temporarily somewhat disjointed.

Koreans in the Vietnam War

I stopped blogging for two years in order to concentrate on some other work. I think it's a good time to start again.

One of the reasons I like reading war stories is because I can get glimpses into the minds of people from the way they react to difficult and often even extreme circumstances. How people fight in wartime can reveal a lot about how the same people will likely behave in peacetime. Here's an example from the book Chickenhawk by Robert Mason.

We were camped on an old ARVN rifle range near the village of Phu Cat, next to route 1. About a thousand ROKs from the Korean Tiger Division surrounded us as our security. That was nice because the ROKs (from the Republic of Korea) were devout killers. They spent their dawns beating each other up just for fun.

When I had first dealt with the Koreans at Bong Son valley, I was impressed by their zeal. When we drove by the Korean bridge guards, they jumped to attention with a shout. When we were mortared, the Koreans were the ones who came back to the camp carrying VC heads and the mortar tube. From the first time I saw them, I thought we'd be better off just giving the Koreans the country, if they could take it. They probably would've.

At Tuy Hoa, we flew missions for the Koreans. At the pickup point, Gary and I watched five or six Korean rangers load our ship with food and ammo in less than a minute. Very few Koreans spoke English, so when the ship was loaded, a young soldier ran out to us and gave us a slip of paper with a list of coordinates written on it. The soldier saluted and left. We were to fly to these places and they would know what to do.

At the first stop, the ship was barely on the ground when a whole team of Koreans unloaded their portion of the load in seconds. No words were spoken. At the next stop, the same thing happened. And the next. By eleven o'clock in the morning, we had finished a resupply mission that would have taken us all day had we been resupplying Americans.

All the Korean ROKs were hand-picked, highly trained volunteers. They were dedicated professionals who took the job seriously and because they were performing under the watchful eyes of their original teachers, they were out to prove their abilities. They did.