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  International Acclaim for Anthony Grey’s Peking

  ‘A moving, authentic, tautly written saga of forty years of blood, sweat and tears in China and of Europeans and Chinese trying to align private and public values amidst it all . . . conveys brilliantly the workings of the Chinese Communist system in its dealings with foreigners and dissidents . . Grey handles family life with great sensitivity . . . He feels China’s grandeur. He knows its cruelty. He is fascinated with its power to sway the foreigner, to make a plaything of him, to inject him for life with a love—hate Potion that keeps him awe—struck even as he suffers and fails to understand.’ Ross Terrill LOS ANGELES TIMES

  ‘Grey throws real and imaginary British and Chinese characters together during these events in a most inventive manner, true to the spirit of history

  This English writer has hit upon a winning formula for historical novels that rest on solid research and are painstakingly balanced. THE JAPAN TIMES

  ‘Horrifyingly vivid description of the Long March — Grey’s message, spoken by Kellner to a dying Mao Tse-tung is that the Chinese revolution triumphed due to the indomitable spiritual strength of its people and not the shrill slogans of a paranoid demagogue. This message as well as rise account of the Long March lift Peking above the soggy sagas that fuel the mini-series machine. PHILADELPHIA ENQUIRER

  ‘Peking is exceptional. The first part is an enthralling reconstruction of the Long March which not only describes the horror of during six thousand miles of mountains, frozen swamps, deserts, river crossings and enemy attacks, but gives a clear idea of how it came about — The second part which takes place during the Cultural Revolution is almost t as engrossing and the reader will emerge with much new knowledge, only slightly breathless at page 645.’ THE IRISH TIMES

  ‘Peking is a very good novel . . . The main character of two families are interwoven with historical figures in a way that is fascinating.

  This extraordinary book rewards the reader with accurate details of the hardships endured by the Communists on the Lon March, with Insights into the emotion that led to some of the atrocities of the Cultural Revolution and with understanding of the power and the attraction Mao Tse-tung had for his people.’ CHATTANOOGA NEWS--FREE PRESS

  ‘Perhaps the most descriptive novel of the Chinese Communist Long March, Peking is certainly one of the best-researched works of fiction . . . Seldom does a novel adhere so well to history yet remain so objective on such controversial facts. Grey has written a classic, one which those who would understand China today should surely read.’

  SUNDAY STAR—NEWS Pasadena, California

  ‘Grey has done a masterful job . . . well written and exciting -- definitely recommended.’

  THE LIBRARY JOURNAL New York

  ‘It is a violent, chaotic and often depressing China that Grey presents, but his characters — the men notably — come alive.’

  Jonathan Mirsky THE INDEPENDENT London

  ‘Gives Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai vivid personalities and robust dialogue which, given the paucity of material on actual conversations on the Long March route, is pure Anthony Grey: irresistibly readable.’ Mark Graham SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

  Anthony Grey is a versatile author, best known for his novel Saigon, which examines events in war-torn Vietnam. But Peking, his fifth novel, will undoubtedly be one of the major literary achievements of 1988 and consolidate his reputation as a distinguished novelist. BAY OF PLENTY TIMES, NEW ZEALAND

  Magnificent epic novel on modern China. The book is worth reading solely as a factual reminder of the chaos and calamity of China as a quarter of the world’s people struggled and suffered towards modernity in the stormy and cruel decades between 1920 and 1980. The reader is placed quite simply and brilliantly in sympathy with the human aims of the Communist revolution.

  TORONTO STAR

  Peking is a masterly novel of China’s revolution . . . Anthony Grey’s handling of this unforgettably poignant story is without question superb. HOBART HERALD TRIBUNE

  ‘Outstanding . . . can you imagine a 645-page novel without profanity or steamy love scenes? But that’s hat Anthony Grey has accomplished in the story of Jakob Kellner, a young English missionary who is captured by Mao’s Red Army at the start of the Long March in 1934 . . . At the beginning Kellner is a poster model of muscular Christianity ... Through the years he grows from a plastic—saint kind of man to a more modest state of being, one of balance, sanity, serenity and realized human love in the face of a shifting and violent and mostly hateful world. SUNDAY RECORD New York

  ‘Anthony Grey has every reason to be cross with the Chinese who locked him, then a Reuters man, in his room for two years during the Cultural Revolution. And yet he shows considerable affection for China and its Communist leaders in Peking the second novel in his Asia trilogy. . - A remarkable story of love, hunger and survival on the Long March. The best airport read of all. PUNCH London

  ‘In the tradition of Mandarin and Tai-Pan, Peking adds another dimension to China and the Chinese . . . The characterizations are excellent and the intricate plotting is deftly done. The novel is a skillful work that is difficult to put down - - Score a success for Anthony Grey.’ MILWAUKEE JOURNAL

  ‘Peking is a blockbuster - . - good, full of interesting facts, an excellent read, panoramic in scope and often powerful in effect. - Fascinating stuff: but what lingers on is the teller of the talc, the voice behind it.’ The FINANCIAL TIMES London

  ‘Anthony Grey’s gripping fiction based on meticulously attributed sources is part epic, part blockbuster. - . A sometimes melodramatic but nevertheless moving chronicle .. - The Long March inward into the spirit - . . is the author’s most desirable theorem . . . Profoundly sincere theme . . . Grand soap opera perhaps. Deep, not at all soapy waters.’ THE TIMES London

  ‘The mental torture Grey underwent has done little to shake his love of China and he has now transformed his experiences into Peking, a novel set against the last seventy years of the country’s tumultuous history. His depth of feeling makes this a compelling epic.’ THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH London

  ‘Skillfully narrated . . . Grey is good at catching an historical mood and at describing the complex relations between ordinary Europeans and Chinese thrown together by history - . - The web of Peking is impressive. The book is a parable of China and the West’s love affair with it.’ FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW Hong Kong

  ‘It is hard to imagine a more compelling backdrop for a novel than twentieth-century China . . . Anthony Grey does not squander that backdrop in his epic novel Peking, rather embellishes it with well—fleshed characters, violence, sex (including unintentional incest) and plenty of intergenerational, inter-cultural and class conflict . . Grey’s description of the Long March — its privations, acts of heroism and cowardice — is masterful.’ ANDERSON INDEPENDANT-MAIL South Carolina

  ‘Grey, a superbly accomplished writer, weaves a masterly tale of triumph and tragedy with the latter winning hands down . . . it seems complicated but Grey’s deep understanding of the Chinese psyche and his professional involvement in South East Asia gives him the authority to capture poignantly the essence of ideological, personal and cultural conflict with marvelous detail . . - erudite, imaginative and instructive sequel to his best-selling Saigon.’ Edward Masson THE WESTERN AUSTRALIAN

  ‘The French novelist André Malraux set a standard for the China epic genre with Man’s Fate, transforming the defeat of the Communist-led urban insurrection by Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists in 1927 into one of the great works of Western fiction . . . Malraux shows the revolution as an act of idealism; Grey’s focus is on the fanaticism that surged out of the Communist Utopian vision. Man’s Fate saw the betrayal of
the Communist movement in Shanghai as a political and human tragedy; it is pessimistic because Malraux believed the revolution had failed. Peking draws on the tragedy that came as a consequence of the revolutionary take—over. It is pessimistic because the revolution triumphed. In its sophisticated, unblinkered preoccupation with the tragedy of Chinese politics it comes closer to Man’s Fate than most other books of the genre.’ Richard Amber WORLD AND 1 MAGAZINE Washington D.C.

  Not only is Peking a novel crammed with detail and drama, it is written with such understanding and authority that it is history — terror, confusion, faith and love. What more could you want?

  MELBOURNE REPORT

  PEKING

  Anthony Grey is a former foreign correspondent in Eastern Europe and China. His enduring epic, Saigon, has won international critical acclaim in the Far East, Australasia, Europe and America. His first book, Hostage in Peking, was an autobiographical account of two years’ solitary confinement in China during the Cultural Revolution.

  Books by Anthony Grey

  AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  Hostage in Peking (1970)

  SHORT STORIES

  A Man Alone (si)

  NONFICTION

  The Prime Minister Was a Spy (1983)

  NOVELS

  Some Put Their Trust in Chariots (1975)

  The Bulgarian Exclusive (1976)

  The Chinese Assassin (1979)

  Saigon (1981)

  Peking (1988)

  Anthony Grey

  PEKING

  A Novel of China’s Revolution

  1921-1978

  Pan Books

  London, Sydney and Auckland

  First published in Great Britain in 1988 by George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd

  This edition published 1989 by Pan Books Ltd,

  Cavaye Place, London SW10 9 PG

  987654321

  © James Murray Literary Enterprises Ltd 1988

  ISBN 0 330 30134 9

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Richard Clay Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser Except for any known historical figures and events, the characters and occurrences in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  This epigraph from Doctor Zhivago, by Boris Pasternak, translated by Max Hayward and Manya Harari, is reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Copyright © 1957 by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, Milano, Italy; © 1958 in the English translation by Win. Collins Sons and Co., Ltd., London,

  and Pantheon Books Inc., New York, NY.

  Dedicated

  with the greatest admiration

  to

  Alfred Bosshardt,

  a true hero of our times,

  who marched 2,500 miles as a prisoner

  of China’s Red Army in the 1930s

  and survived through courage and faith that echo down the years into the present.

  Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of

  possessing form, and form is the key to all organic life

  since no living thing can exist without it, so every work

  of art, including tragedy, witnesses to the joy of existence.

  Boris Pasternak,

  Doctor Zhivago

  Contents

  Prologue

  Manchester 1921

  PART ONE The Marchers Gather 1931

  PART TWO The Long March Begins 1934

  PART THREE The Marchers Change Step 1935

  PART FOUR The Marchers Triumph Summer 1935

  PART FIVE The Marchers Falter 1957

  PART SIX The Marchers Break Ranks 1966

  PART SEVEN The Long March Ends 1976

  Epilogue 1978

  Postscript

  Author’s Note

  In this novel the romanized spelling of all Chinese terms and names is based on the Wade-Giles system. China and other countries commonly used the Wade-Giles from the nineteenth century until 1979. In that year the government in Peking introduced a system of romanization called pinyin into all its foreign-language publications, and other countries followed suit to avoid confusion. Since all the action of the novel takes place before 1979 and since the newer complexities of pinyin arc still confusing for non-specialists, the older system seemed more appropriate.

  Prologue

  MANCHESTER 1921

  Because our eyes are blue, most Chinese believe we can see into the ground to a depth of three feet.”

  The sunburned features of the tall, quiet-spoken Lancashire missionary relaxed in an amused smile.

  “They think we use that little trick to discover gold in China. But for some strange reason they’re also convinced that we blue-eyed folk can’t see through clear water.”

  The missionary’s smile broadened; his teeth gleamed white in a lean, handsome face that had been burnished to the color of bronze by many years of Asian sun and wind, and the expression lent a temporary radiance to the drab church hail in which an audience of several hundred devout Mancunians were listening intently to his every word.

  “They call us ‘yang kuei tzu’ — ‘foreign devils’ — and they say we murder Chinese children in our missionary orphanages so that we can use their intestines to turn lead into silver! They say the high spires of the churches we’re building in China are annihilating their spirits of the air . . . that the mine shafts and railways being constructed by British engineers are destroying the benevolent influence of terrestrial dragons coiled deep beneath the earth.”

  Near the back of the hail Jakob Kellner shifted suddenly on one of the hard wooden benches where he sat between his parents. Still innocent blue eyes, inherited from his Swiss-born father, narrowed in concentration as he dragged his fascinated gaze away from the heroic figure of the missionary to stare fiercely at the coarse-grained planks of the floor. With all the force his ten-year-old mind could muster, he willed his sense of sight to penetrate the scuffed wood and enter the earth beneath.

  Who could tell, thought Jakob excitedly, perhaps terrestrial English dragons, unknown to anyone, lay coiled in the earth beneath industrial Manchester? Perhaps it was their “benevolent influence” that had attracted the forest of cotton-mill chimneys to that region of northern England in the first place. Perhaps the thick black smoke that belched daily from the mill chimneys came in reality from these fire-breathing beasts! It was the mills and the industrial prosperity they promised which years before had lured his father westward across Europe from the impoverished canton of Zurich to seek work in the city as a textile engineer. Perhaps, thought Jakob, those same magic dragons had prompted the meeting between his father and his gentle, artistic English mother while she was teaching the new techniques of embroidering by machinery in the mills.

  His father’s big-boned hands, grimed permanently with oil in their creases, rested in his lap at the edge of Jakob’s vision. He was a taciturn, mild-mannered man who had started attending the nonconformist church in a cobbled back street of Moss Side merely to please his wife. But now, like all the other rapt listeners around him, his faith had become a vital source of refreshment that helped him endure the hardships of life in the mean, dingy streets that had grown up around the mills. Notorious for its constant rain and raw fogs, Manchester was excelling its reputation even on that midsummer Sunday of 1921. Steady, soot-laden rain was drenching the cobbles outside the hail and a leaden sky pressed against the dirty windows. If only those invisible underground dragons could influence the weather, thought Jakob. If only the sun would burn down on Manchester as it obviously did on China to weather the pale, gaunt faces around him and make them resemble that of the tall, energ
etic missionary who was undertaking a short speaking tour during his first home leave in ten years.

  “They call the new telegraph wires we have put up in the remote interior regions of China ‘iron snakes.’ When rainwater rusts on them and drips to the ground, they say it is the blood of the dying spirits of the air. If there is a famine or a drought they blame foreign missionaries and all our works, saying we have outraged those spirits. . . . So great efforts, you see, are still required to overcome this terrible ignorance and spread the word of God through the length and breadth of China!”

  Jakob raised his eyes to find the missionary slipping on a wide- sleeved, embroidered Chinese long-gown. Smiling again, he held up a black satin cap with an artificial pigtail attached to the back, then pulled it into place to cover his steel-gray hair. Clasping his hands together within the sleeves, he inclined his head and shoulders in a mock bow, transforming himself instantly into the likeness of a Chinese mandarin.