Playwright Clare Boothe, accompanied her husband, LIFE's editor Henry R. Luce, to the Chinese front last May. Her photographs illustrated his account of that journey published in the June 30 issue of LIFE. Herewith Clare Boothe sets down some of her own deductions about China made in the course of her visit in which she flew from Hong Kong to Chungking to the Yellow River front in the North and back again. |
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THIS is not a military map of modern China. It is a picture map of the history of Old China, the 4,600-year-old kingdom of the Middle of the World. Fittingly centered on the map, because it represented the unity of China, is the Altar of Heaven on which the Emperors in Peking used to pray in the center of nine concentric circles of marble to the God of the Universe, Shang-ti. China's code of human conduct goes back 2,500 years to Confucius, whose tomb is shown. From India by way of a symbolic White Horse, which gave its name to a temple in the North, came a religion and a life-after-death from Confucius' contemporary, Buddha. In 762 A.D. China's greatest poet, Li Po, a drunkard, drowned trying to kiss the sheen of moonlight on water and got a temple dedicated to him. Elsewhere on the map are shown the route of Marco Polo to the court of Kublai Khan whose great armada notably failed to vanquish the Japanese seamen. Near Nanking stands the modern tomb of China's "George Washington," revolutionary Sun Yat-sen. China's real dragon is the flooding Hwang Ho River. |
A century ago this was the way the Emperor Tao-Kuang, father-in-law of the infamous Dowager Empress Tzu-Hsi, reviewed his guards in the gold-roofed Forbidden City ("The Great Within") inside Peking. High on his balcony in the background sits the Emperor. |
The tragic Emperor Kuang-Hsu, an absolute prisoner of the Dowager Empress and her palace eunuchs because of his Reform Edicts of 1898, is carted through streets of Peking in hollow splendor after anti-foreigner Boxer Rebellion. Empress encouraged the Boxers, disgraced China, fled Peking taking Emperor with her. |
Dowager's husband, Emperor Hsien-Feng, had Tzu-Hsi only as a secondary consort, but her son became the child Emperor Tung-Chih. His mother was regent during most of his reign. |
Dowager Empress Tzu-Hsi ("Venerable Buddha") sits among her ladies who wear Manchu court dress and redden their lips. Her "retirement" as regent made her really a "super-empress." |
Little Pu-Yi at 2 became Emperor Hsuan-T'ung when his uncle, the imprisoned Emperor Kuang-Hsu, died in 1908. His reign lasted three years, until he was deposed by Revolution in 1911. |
Dowager Empress, as a huge concession to modernism, takes her first ride on a train and thanks French railway official for her safe trip. Notice her long fingernails and square stilt shoes. |
Her prisoner and nephew, Emperor Kuang-Hsu, married to her niece, was obliged to receive foreign diplomas as though he were the real power. Hidden brick walls shut in throne room. |
Reform Emperor Kuang-Hsu before his fall, read about the new marvels of Western civilization, lost a war to Japan. Later Dowager Empress beheaded his liberal advisers without trial. |
Pathetic aftermath of Emperor Hsuan-T'ung's reign was his posing on throne in the Forbidden City after Revolution of 1911. No real Emperor was ever photographed on his throne. |
"Exiled" to his own Forbidden City, deposed Pu-Yi walked the gold dragon roofs of his domain from 1912 until he was chased out by a war lord in 1924 to the Japanese Legation. |
Emperor of Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet, since March 1934 is the last state of Pu-Yi, who is now Emperor Kang-Te. Technically he is as much Emperor of China today as he ever was. |
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On Altar of Heaven a 500-year-old marble circle outside Peking, Chinese Emperor used to kneel alone to the God of the Universe (Shang-ti) on Dec. 22. For at least 4,000 years Chinese Emperors had worshipped an invisible God. Emperor spoke for all his people. |
Fortified villages, mostly crumbling into ruin, dot China. This one has a dry moat as well as wall, parapet and watchtowers. Road into it leads across foreground through two gates. This is in Northwest, has often fought Mongol raiders and local bandits. |
The Great Wall of China was the first Maginot Line and in general it worked. Conquests usually came by treason of generals in command of the Wall. The Manchus were invited into China as allies and merely stayed on as conquerors. Wall is one of most important words in Chinese. Ch'eng is word for both city and city wall. There was no real city without a wall. This 2,100-year-old wall runs for 1,500 miles, averages 28 ft. high and has a 12-ft. road on top. It is made of earth faced with stone or brick. |
Chinese village has every mark of a local, agricultural economy. Here the harvested grain is stacked beside the thatched roofs, ready for threshing. There are no paved roads, railways, factories, telephone lines or highways to neighboring villages and towns. |
"Four hundred million little black specks" labor patiently across the face of China. Here thousands of coolies level off and fill in land for an airfield. Soil is moved in baskets slung on shoulders. height of total work done so far can be seen at lower left. |
LIFE'S COVER: The pig-tailed miss on this week's cover is Ann Teal of Greenwich, Conn., class of '43, Smith
College. Ann has straight hair which she usually wears in a medium-long bob. On the campus, however, she frequently
braids it in practical pigtails. Ann is one of thousands of college girls who have worked for pay this summer either
as College Shop models or salesgirls.