James Munro Bertram - Yan'an and The North China Front

Yan'an and The North China Front

In Xi'an Bertram received a radio message from Mao Zedong, inviting him to become the first official 'British' visitor to YenanYan'an. Bertram spent nearly a month in Yan'an during which time he conducted an extensive series of interviews with Mao in his cave-dwelling during which Mao expounded the Japanese objectives and the strategies he believed that the Chinese should adopt to defeat the Japanese. The "Interview with the British Journalist James Bertram" were cited in Mao's Collected Works.

From Yan'an Bertram set out for the Eighth Route Army headquarters in southern Shansi Shanxi and travelled for five months with the army in northern China. On the day that he crossed the Yellow River from ShensiShaanxi back to Shanxi, this time by boat, Taiyuan the Shanxi capital fell to the Japanese. Most of his time was spent with the troops of General Ho Lung (He Long). Based on these experiences behind the front he wrote a book North China Front (1939).

Read more about this topic:  James Munro Bertram

Famous quotes containing the words north, china and/or front:

    “When the Somalians were merely another hungry third world people, we sent them guns. Now that they are falling down dead from starvation, we send them troops. Some may see in this a tidy metaphor for the entire relationship between north and south. But it would make a whole lot more sense nutritionally—as well as providing infinitely more vivid viewing—if the Somalians could be persuaded to eat the troops.”
    —Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)

    “Anyone who tries to keep track of what is happening in China is going to end up by wearing all the skin of his left ear from twirling around on it.”
    —Robert Benchley (1889–1945)

    “The main effect of a real revolution is perhaps that it sweeps away those who do not know how to wish, and brings to the front men with insatiable appetites for action, power and all that the world has to offer.”
    —Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)