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Chapter 11

PRINTING PROBLEMS

[116] At that time (1924) Canton had some two million inhabitants. In Western Europe or America a city of that size would have been modern, with giant factories operating up-to-date machines, trams, and surface and underground railways, and with printing presses run by steam or electricity.

But one would try in vain to find such things in Canton in those days. Canton’s only claims to the term “city” were the post office, some electric lighting, and three main roads. A large part of the land traffic consisted of hundreds and even thousands of pedicabs. The streets were dark and narrow, twisting and turning between gold and diamond stores and noodle stands. They were traversed by millionaires and beggars, professors and illiterates, and people shouldering bridal litters, vegetables, and even some of the refuse and waste generated by two million people every day. Neither buses nor pedicabs could enter these tiny crisscrossing Chinese streets. Alongside the main roads adjacent to the river that divides Canton in two were docks for the ships that plied the seaways between Canton and Hong Kong and Macao. On this same river, night and day one could see the tens of thousands of sampans that were the equivalent of the pedicabs on land. It was said that some eighty thousand people lived on these sampans. If one looked out over Canton from the Hotel Asia, the tallest building, one could see but a single smokestack—from the cement factory, which was, I think, on the other side of the Pearl River: only one small smokestack in a city of two million.¹ That was the situation in Canton when I started to look for a press to print the English-language magazine for which I had chosen the name The Dawn.² It was a huge city filled with shops and businesses run on feudal lines, lined by narrow, dark streets and overflowing with pedicabs and sampans.

[117] It’s true, as the adage goes, that “everything new comes from Canton.”³ Had not the social and political revolution started there? Not many years later Canton was to become a really modern city, but The Dawn was born before all that.

While I was sitting wondering how I could possibly carry out the decision of the Canton conference, a Chinese comrade who spoke English well came to take me to meet the veteran revolutionary T’an P’ing-shan.⁴ T’an P’ing-shan could understand only a little English, but he was considered an educated person in the traditional sense.

All my remarks about the difficulties I was facing in my work and my daily life as a non-Chinese-speaking foreigner and the particular problem of finding a press with Latin letters (there were many with Chinese characters) were answered by his inimitable smile and the words: “All that is true, but don’t give up. Look at our difficulties in every field.”

To help me, T’an P’ing-shan found a professor who ran his own college. Formerly he had been an English teacher at one of the missionary schools, but he had gone on strike and finally walked out, taking some of his pupils with him. Gratefully I went with the man, Professor Huang, into the city of Canton, through the main roads and into the alleys.⁵ Finally we arrived at a “printshop.” After talking to the printer for several minutes, whispering, shaking his head, and smiling, Professor Huang turned to me and said: “This printer is one of our friends. We can entrust major jobs to him. Even The Dawn can be printed here. The only problem is that he hasn’t got enough letters . . . Anyhow, this is the only one to be found in the whole of Canton.” Professor Huang laughed in a way uncharacteristic for a Chinese intellectual, as if to say: “This in itself is extraordinary for Canton, so what can we do? We’ll just have to have it done here.”

[118] I felt relieved. At least one of my important tasks could be carried out. I saw the magazine as a tool with which to reach out to one section of the Asian workers. Without the magazine it would be hard to carry out my other tasks. It was the first step. My other tool for reaching out was a language of communication. Even though I had something to say, without a sufficiently mastered means of communication all my efforts would be in vain. And the language was to be English. I thought that if, after two or three months of studying hard, I had been able to write and make speeches in simple German and had even addressed the International’s congress, why shouldn’t I have the same results with English? So I convinced myself.

My plan was ready to put into action. I focused my study on grammar. I tried to keep up with day-to-day events in China, both to improve my English and to know what was going on. I had neglected to consider several factors, however. First, when I had studied German I was surrounded by Germans, while I was now forced to learn English in the middle of a society of Chinese. Second, and more important, even in summer the German climate had been healthful for me, stimulating my appetite and my desire to work and to enjoy myself. But Canton, subject to the Continental climate, was quite astonishing. For me it was like a bakery in the summer and an ice-chest in the winter. Furthermore, I had not yet integrated myself into Chinese society. I did not yet understand their philosophy of cooking, whereby the food was suited to the climate. The only restaurant I knew was the “Boston,” managed by a Cantonese who had returned from America and who cooked in the American style—heavy, fatty food that was unsuited to the hot season. I began to get headaches, to lose my appetite, and to find it harder and harder to sleep. But I still had to use precious time in this foreign society trying to master English. I read all the time.

My appetite waned further, my nights were ever more sleepless, my headaches got worse, and I began to cough. All this indicated that my health was going downhill fast. I had already been here for two months, and still The Dawn was not ready. Professor Huang became harder and harder to locate. He had to go around raising funds for his college, which was in all sorts of difficulties, but without him I could not even talk to the printer.

[119] The one step forward I had made was my attempt to write in English about a strike in Shameen, the European area in the center of Canton.⁶ I showed the article to someone who had lived for a long time in America and who knew English well. “This is fine for the workers, whose English is not too good,” he said. “You have used short sentences and words that are easy to understand. I would like you to write an analysis of the Asian situation for me.”

What was important to me was that I had arrived at the stage where with my basic English I could communicate with the leaders of the Asian workers. Basic English was being widely propagandized in China. With a knowledge of some eight hundred basic words one could explain one’s thoughts, whatever they might be, in English, as long as one followed the grammatical rules carefully.⁷ For all that, I was not content and could not be content, to remain on the level of basic English, for books, magazines, and newspapers are not written in this form. Nevertheless, I had reached this stage and had written several articles in English for The Dawn, but the printing was still swaying along like an old cart. The first issue was not even half completed. There were not enough letters. For example, the word “Pacific” had to be written “PacifiC” because of a shortage of small c’s. And a single word might be written with two or three capital letters in the middle. It certainly looked peculiar. But what was even more depressing was that after three months not even the first issue was ready. How could I account for this to Moscow, where they could not possibly know the situation?

Finally, with great difficulty, I secured an assistant especially for The Dawn. He was a former pupil at an American school in China, and his English was good, but he was with me for only two days when he vanished. He was taken away by other organizations in Canton for their English sections. Indeed there were shortages in all fields: shortages of type, shortages of personnel, shortages of everything.

Frequently, with no one to help me, with my head aching, and the heat beating down, I would go to visit the printer, only to be met by his inevitable smile, which indicted that the work was not ready yet. I was getting less and less sleep every day. One morning after bathing, my whole body felt stiff and I think I lost consciousness for a moment. I was incapable of reading even a line.

[120] I went to a Chinese doctor, Dr. Lee.⁸ He had often treated Dr. Sun and was a graduate of a German university. With the help of two assistants, he gave me several injections: at first he gave me one, and then he followed up with three or four jabs in different parts of my body. I felt quite strange. Dr. Lee said: “I gave you a gold injection just now. But your pulse stopped for several seconds so we had to give you injections of antidote.”

I answered: “Yes, I felt you give me one injection here, and then all over.”

Dr. Lee continued: “We thought you had died. Your pulse wasn’t functioning. If we hadn’t acted swiftly, you would have been lost.”

Dr. Lee had apparently made a mistake. He thought I had tuberculosis. He had recently read about a new treatment by gold injection, developed by a Swedish doctor.⁹ If, in fact, I had had tuberculosis, I would not have minded being used as a guinea pig. But the diagnosis was wrong.¹⁰

The following day I sought the advice of Dr. Rummel, a German doctor who had long worked in Canton. “What is worrying you?” he asked. I was advised to stop work immediately and not even to read. “You had best go to a warm tropic place to rest,” he said, diagnosing my illness as a physical breakdown.

Dr. Lee had also advised that I go somewhere to convalesce. I therefore went back to him to ask for a certificate stating that I needed rest. It was this certificate and an accompanying letter from me to the Dutch East Indies government that was referred to in the Encyclopaedie and quoted above.¹¹ I sent the letters to the PKI for consideration by the party as to whether they should be sent on. They decided to forward them to the government. The answer, which came to me by way of the PKI, was most unsatisfactory. My reply to the government’s answer created quite a storm in a teacup.¹² A Dutch newspaper that dared to print my reply was slapped with restrictions by the Dutch East Indies government.¹³ My letter was in no way a plea for forgiveness, as had been alleged; this allegation was answered clearly by Subakat in the newspaper Api.¹⁴ It is as well for me to straighten the matter out here, even though it has been covered up for some twenty years.

[121] Naturally the Dutch East Indies is not the only tropic country. But Siam, Burma, Annam, the Philippines, and Malaya—all countries below the tropic-were closed to me by their respective governments. The key to entry was in my hands, in my ability to smuggle myself in. What was important concerning my correspondence with the Dutch East Indies government was not the question of a place for me but the question of fair play. The Dutch East Indies government was forced to show that it felt no such concern. The article by the late Subakat on this matter also centered on the government’s unfair attitude. And that was what led to the proposal for a strike by the PKI and the trade unions, as mentioned in the Encyclopaedie and quoted above.

It was not only my illness that pushed me into going to the tropics. Time and again I had received telegrams asking me to come. The reason was not and could not be disclosed. All I knew was that in 1925 the PKI was facing a serious crisis.¹⁵ Cables naturally cross a distance of 2,500 kilometers with no trouble, but it was no easy thing for someone in my weak state, without a country and without a passport, to travel that far. I experimented with all kinds of injections from Filipino, English, and Portuguese doctors in Hong Kong. For the first time I even tried Chinese herbal medicines and various remedies advocated by the Chinese sailors. All I wanted was the strength to cross the sea.

A stow away violated international law and is liable to severe punishment, but if I were caught, the danger was not merely in being jailed, but in being handed over to the Dutch East Indies government. Even this one journey as a stow away produced enough stories to fill a book. Even for a healthy person or for a European stow away on a European boat, the exercise involves all kinds of risks: finding a hiding place, getting food, avoiding detection, and so on. It is all the more hazardous for a sick Indonesian on a boat loaded with thousands of Chinese packed in like sardines. I had to find a place of concealment and avoid being discovered in all the inspections for vaccinations and passports in all the British-run ports. In short, it was a triumph just to arrive alive rather than dead of starvation in some secret place on the boat.

[122] I got to a certain place down south to meet with my comrades.¹⁶ But scarcely had I tasted the tropical air when another cable came from 2,500 kilometers away. It was a request to return to Canton immediately, since a Profintern representative had arrived from Moscow and wanted to meet me. For someone who did not know the situation, “immediately” would mean two or three days, but even with all the necessary papers such a journey would take a week at the least. Even straining myself the utmost I could not have made it in under two weeks, and that was assuming that no problems arose.

After two weeks and on my last breath, I arrived in Canton. But the person who had called me had apparently himself been recalled. “What was hunted wasn’t found, and what was in the cage escaped,” says the proverb.

I was unable to do anything because of the difficulties with language and getting the printing completed, and because my health, which had improved slightly while I was in the tropic air, was now just as bad as before.¹⁷ There was really no point either for myself or for the organization in my remaining in China. After settling my responsibilities with the Canton Bureau, I tried to make my way to the Philippines to convalesce.¹⁸

To travel south without the necessary documents was hard enough because of restrictions on the entry of Chinese to the area. But to enter the Philippines, with its American Emigration Law, was even harder.¹⁹ I had to investigate all aspects of the effort very carefully beforehand, and I had to get so many extra injections before embarking on the journey that I felt like a deflated rubber ball being pumped up.

I got these injections and the opportunity to investigate ways to get into the Philippines in a Filipino hostel in Hong Kong. Miss Carmen, the daughter of a former rebel in the Philippines, who ran the hostel with her mother, was prepared to give me invaluable tips regarding traffic to the Philippines and the way of life there.²⁰ She also helped by giving me lessons in Tagalog. If I could learn German and English in a few months, then I had no cause to balk at learning Tagalog, one of the languages of the Indonesian group.

[123] My understanding of how I could enter the Philippines and blend into the society there was perfected with the help of my acquaintances at the hostel, particularly a certain educated traveler. Confident in my ability to judge a person’s character from appearance, I decided to disclose to this traveler as much as was necessary about my situation in order to ask for frank information. This proved not to be in vain, and in fact rewarded me with more than I had hoped for. He turned out to be a supporter of unity among the Indonesian peoples and had once spoken to Indonesian students in the Netherlands and had been quietly pushed out of the Netherlands by the government. He showed me the signatures in his memory book of his acquaintances among the Indonesians in the Netherlands. The first name on the list was Semaun, followed by Meester Subardjo, Meester Moh. Nazir, and others.²¹ He became my first close Filipino friend and proved to be faithful and honest with regard to my secret wherever I was up to the outbreak of World War II. He was Dr. Mariano Santos, a graduate of a Filipino university who had traveled widely in America and Europe and who was only now returning. Later he became vice president of Manila University.²²

To cut the story short, I finally left Hong Kong at the beginning of June 1925 on board a President Line ship, together with passengers from all over the world but mainly from America and the Philippines.²³ My experiences of the European way of life, my knowledge of two or three European languages, particularly English, my smattering of Tagalog, and last but not least my appearance, which was 100 percent Filipino and in fact more authentic than 20 to 30 percent of the Filipino racial mixtures, armed me fully for conversation, telling a joke á la America, joining in the dancing, and so on. No one would doubt that I was indeed what I seemed, a Filipino returning home.

I had no documents at all. I was able to get through the smallpox certificate, passport, and customs inspections, which are generally carried out thoroughly by the Filipino officials, by playing out the humbug role of a Filipino student returning from the United States and by acting smoothly or bluffing in Tagalog like a Filipino boxer, as the situation demanded. The key to my success was not to be afraid of anything and not to overact.

Finally, having steered myself through all kinds of situations that are particularly hard to navigate without any papers, I arrived at Miss Carmen’s parents’ home in Santa Mesa, on the outskirts of Manila.²⁴ There a Filipino who had just returned to his long-lost homeland from abroad came to rest. His name was Elias Fuentes, and he was none other than this writer himself. So much for the American Emigration Law.²⁵