Letter to Mao Tse-Tung

With some thoughts on Formosa and the Cult of Personality

May-feted Chairman Mao,
Across the teasel bow
Most circumspectly.
This poor epistle take
For old acquaintance sake.
Though soon I hope to make
My bow directly.

Tibet to Mukden now,
Haiphong to Chinwangtao,
Ring with your praises;
And (what concerns us most)
All that long China coast
Where Uttered junks are tossed,
And Yankee cruisers.

Statesmen fly here and there,
Bangkok to Canberra,
Delhi to Burma.
Nothing will go as planned.
Treaties are signed in sand—
You, Chairman Mao, still stand
On terra firma.

Fortune has spun her wheel,
Steel has rung hard on steel
Since last we parted.
Yenan lay under snow
Eighteen long years ago,
When I rode out with Ho
Lung the great-hearted.

Chu Teh and Chou En-lai,
Hsiao Keh and Peng Teh-huai
Were my companions
In Shansi mountains when
Your Eighth Route Army then
Flung Itagaki's men
Down frozen canyons

From China's peasant sons
You built your wall of bronze
Stronger than Huang-Ti's:
Had I the words or wit
Here I might sing of it,
And hail their epic feat
In epic spondees.

Much-altered Chairman Mao,
I still remember how
We talked together
Through the long Shensi night
While in your cave the light
Dipped, and the stars were bright:
Hard campaign weather.

Your faded cap pushed back,
You told me in your thick
Hunanese accent
Of China's destiny—
How she must rise to be
A nation great, and free
From fear of faction.

Your "Border Region" lay.
Round us, a waste of clay
Scorned and unwanted—
Meaner and barer far
Than Taiwan's fragrant air,
Or sea-girt Ithaca
The hero-haunted.

All that is altered now,
No more cave-dwelling Mao:
In the old Tartar
City, by I Tsung's grave,
Bands crash and banners wave—
Who, from such hosts, can save
Chiang the deserter?

Big talk from Washington
Urges his minions on—
Peking knows better.
No hardy conquerors
Those ageing warriors:
Who climbs a tree, when pears
Drop to the sitter?

In England once, a king
Sat amid revelling
Foolish advisers.
They said, "Command the tide!"
Smiling that king replied
"Hero let my throne abide.
Yet, the tide arises."

So to you, Chairman Mao,
We look for wisdom now
Since some have lost it—
Can you be patient yet
While fleet-commanders fret,
And Taiwan Strait is wet
For all who crossed it?

Greatly provoked, the great
Soberly contemplate
Those, the fair-fated
Who in their time were wise,
Humoured their enemies:
Knew that the tide would rise
If they'd await it.

Wise men of old could tell
When Heaven was bountiful:
By temple portal
Sweetly the music rang
From chiming jade, air-hung:
Peking, be patient! Chiang
Is not immortal.

History has lesson for
Conquered and conqueror—
Stalin the Mighty
Loks rather different now:
Far-sighted Chairman Mao,
Verb, sap. I make by bow.
And end this writing.

—James Bertram

[Author's note: The campaigning referred to took place in the first year of the main China War (1937-38): Seishiro Itagaki, later Japanese War Minster and one of the ablest of their field commanders, met the first heavy Japanese defeat of the war at the hands of one division of Chu Teh's 8th Route Army at Pinsingkwan. I was then with the 120the division under Ho Lung. Ch'in Shih Huang-Ti was the upstart emperor who built the Great Wall of China. Taiwan is the Chinese name for Formoss. I Tsung was the last Ming—i.e., the last purely Chinese—emperor; he hanged himself on Coal Hill behind the old Forbidden City in Peking, in front of which the big mass parades are now held. In ancient China there was an art of divination by the sounds of musical instruments blown by the wind.—J.B.]