of the Shui Hu Chuan, and by the exploits of the heroes of the Romance of Three Kingdoms, who had fought over the fields and mountains of his native Szechuan. He gravitated naturally toward military life. Helped by his family’s political influence, he was accepted in the new Yunnan Military Academy, and he was among the first cadets in China to be given modern military training. Upon graduation from the Yunnan Academy he was commissioned a lieutenant, and entered what the Chinese referred to as the “foreign army”—“foreign” because it used Western methods of drill and tactics, because it did not go into battle accompanied by Chinese musicians, and because for arms it used “foreign spears”—rifles with fixed bayonets on them. In the overthrow of the Manchu Dynasty in 1912 this modern army of Yunnan played a prominent role, and Chu Teh, leading a battalion of braves, soon distinguished himself as a warrior of the republic. By 1916, when Yuan Shih-k’ai attempted to restore the monarchy, he was a brigadier general, and his Yunnanese troops under the celebrated Ts’ai O were the first to raise the banner of revolt, which doomed Yuan’s imperial ambitions to defeat.
What do You think about Red Star Over China (1938)?
