The Manchurian Revolt

Hao Yahui kept his face's expression carefully blank as the Japanese soldier patted him down. The man rifled through the baskets on the carrying pole he had, taking out one of the dumplings he had saved for lunch and taking a big bite out of it before putting it back in, looking at him with a gloating expression. The other Japanese guard laughed, and laughed harder when his compatriot took another bite before from another putting it back in the basket. The man swallowed the food with a satisfied gulp, then sent him away on his way with a hefty blow on his back. "Must be a new guard" he thought to himself - most of the veteran ones were even more disdainful towards the Chinese, but they didn't concern themselves enough with them to go so far as striking them, even if dumplings were always fair game. "There were too many to strike after all", he thought as he saw the long line of Chinese marching through the gate. He'd be hungry later, but what else was one to do? Mukden was a low lying city, with bustles of people next to the Chinese style houses. The Japanese had torn down some of them for their roads, still of dirt but wider, and a Japanese infantry movement marched down this one, their heads rigidly forward and with rifles on their shoulders, the bayonets glittering under the blue sky. The Chinese kept well clear, except for a child, perhaps 6 or 7, who darted forwards and threw a rock at them, shouting "go home Huang jun!!" - "go home yellow army!" The Japanese kept marching, and the Chinese ignored the child. He ran up to try to hit the Japanese soldier closer, and one of the Japanese soldiers turned out of line and cracked him with the rifle barrel. The child was almost thrown backwards, starting to wail, and a young woman ran up to him screaming "My child, my child!' The Japanese kept marching, the soldier getting back into line, although there were some chuckles upon and down the files. Yahui shook his head. It was amazing how stupid children were. He looked up, and saw the sign for a local restaurant, with an alley leading off it, and walked down it, through a dizzying variety of little back alleys, with hollow-eyed men staring at him. Opium addicts. He glanced behind a few times, looking for anybody following him, and then knocked on the door to a shoddy looking tenement. "Who is there?" came a gruff point from the inside, just long enough for him to have thought that he had gotten the wrong building after all - even for someone from Mukden, the buildings could look so similar. "Paper cranes arrive from the west." The door was pulled back, and a bear like man gave Yahui a hug. "Yahui! You're here! Was there trouble on the roads again? Come in, come in!" Yahui walked in through the door, turning the carrying pole to get through, the hallway creaking with its familiar sound as he stepped inside and closed the door. He set down the carrying pole on the floor before he kept talking. "More Japanese patrols than usual, I thought that they had almost caught me at Jizhou, but I got away from the dogs." He refrained from spitting - hadn't the Emperor himself said that it was time for a new life for the Chinese people, where they respected cleanliness and order? "What about you Jiahao? I'm seeing more Japanese patrols on the streets these days." Wei Jiahao shook his head, his face clouded. "The bastards are coming here more and more these days, not just troops, but workers, farmers, engineers, their families, for their farms, businesses, factories. There are more and more spies, more and more checkpoints, more and more expulsions. It's a hard life here." "What else can you expect from these bastards? I have somethings which will bring a smile to your face though." "Oh really?" said Jiahao, then paused as Yahui knelt next to the carrying pole, moved the goods he had to peddle out of the basket, and twisted firmly on the edge of the pole, which came off. Tipping it over the basket, a clatter of metal, and a variety of parts fell out. "Which gun type is it this time?" asked Jiahao, his keen eyes seeing the magazine and bolt. "Submachine gun. Apparently it is a MAS-40 submachine gun, some sort of deal to buy guns from the French, but I don't know the details. Disassembled of course." He grimaced. "You don't want to know how hard it is to get everything to fit in this stupid pole, and to make it so it doesn't fucking rattle." "Impressive. I like the folding stock. It fits nicely. You know how to put it together, of course?" "What, we're just going to give submachine guns to you and not have them re-assembled? I've got some folded papers for you too", he added when pulling out some propaganda notes. "Here are some of the depictions." Jihao couldn't read. Jihao looked over it, nodding appreciatively at the showings of Japanese soldiers being defeated by Chinese troops, the Emperor bestowing His benevolence upon Manchuria, the five-races-as-one paintings, and Japanese troops committing brutality. There were others written which were saying largely the same thing, most in Chinese but a few in Manchu, even a few in Japanese - the latter mostly warning the Japanese about their inevitable death and defeat, from what Yahui told him. "This is nice. Good working getting it out here, friend." "That's not all", said Yahui with a little laugh. He pulled up a disgusting looking cooked rat, preserved and looking alarmingly large, and hacked off part of it with a knife. Jihao didn't blink: rats were a common enough food here, although even a beggar would turn his nose up at this. Dirty white material showed. "What is it?" "Demolition charge. 500 grams. You turn the cap here", he said gesturing at the side, "1, 2, or 3 times", and 10, 20, or 30 minutes later, it explodes. "I've got 3 of them, enough to blow up some machinery or a booby trap. Supposedly there's some heavier bombs which are getting smuggled in otherwise, a few kilograms." Jihao smiled a vicious smile, and held up one of the rats and looked at it admiringly. "I don't think I've been happier to see you in my life. We'll start distributing the stuff tomorrow. Is there any word from the homeland?" "Yes, more support. Lot more supplies coming through. This is just the first. Its time that we strike back." --- The next day, as he was leaving the city, after having distributed the peddler goods to Jihao to help provide some liquid cash to the cause, and caroused around in the night, a sour-faced Japanese guard struck him with a rifle butt while searching him. "You fucking Chink bastard, you're lucky the Emperor is too kind to you thieving bandits and lets you live. If I was in charge we wouldn't have any of you out here, you'd all be kicked back out to your excuse of a homeland!" Jihao didn't say anything, merely let the soldier search him and beat him again with the rifle butt, before he let him go. "What was his problem?" he asked to another Chinese man leaving Mukden, as they were out of earshot of the Japanese soldiers "Apparently some Japanese barrack got blown up." The man gave a gap toothed grin. "Some Jap officer's whore snuck in a bomb. It got hot between the sheets there, that's for sure!", he said with a cackle. Jihao smiled, and laughed too, bantering with the man as he walked along the route. A travelling companion for the road, dead Japanese, a fulfilled mission - life was pretty good all said! His smile grew broader later when the other man - Geng Jin - handed him surreptitiously a propaganda affiche, not his own, but definitely one of the models that was being distributed around Manchuria, and bade him to give it to somebody else when he parted, to pass it from hand to hand. The spirit of China was awakening, and the Japanese devils would learn to fear it.