9/2/2008:
In 1947, in the midst of the "red scare," the Cold War and the Bay of Pigs, it is easy to focus on the United States and Russia's power struggles. However, China was also undergoing great upheaval.
Since it had become a republic in 1912, the country had been embattled both internally and externally. The country was mostly unified under the KMT, the nationalist forces. Thereafter, it was caught in power struggles with various warlords, Japan, and other groups, specifically--or perhaps, especially--the communist party of China.
This led to the Second Sino-Japanese war, a major asiatic battle that, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, was incorporated into World War II. When the war ended, however, the communist forces in the country and the nationalist forces were still at conflict, and they once again resumed the Chinese Civil War. With nationalist forces in the south and communist forces in the north, the battle continued until 1950, when communist China, aided in part by Japan, won out over the Nationalists.
In the midst of all these struggles, the agricultural "scene" was pretty desolate; war-time destruction affected farm tools, draft animals and seed, and the land was left unworked. It was reported that in the Kiangsi province, on the south banks of the Yangtze River, Japanese armies devastated the lands, leveled the villages and forced out the farmers, who had to wait out this 8-year occupation and the threat of flooding. However, efforts by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration brought some aid to the region. On this day in 1947, readers of the Bismarck Tribune learned of those ongoing efforts and of the assistance of a "slightly-built" young man, Maurice Richards, who was once native to Carrington.
Richards volunteered his time abroad and was working with the Chinese in the south. "Under his tutelage, 65 grease-smudged young Chinese farmers" learned the "modern methods of farming." They were turning overgrown wastelands into rice fields, unfamiliar to native North Dakotans, but also to vegetable and to wheat fields, our own familiar crop.
The UNRRA also contributed 1,136 tractors to the Chinese, helping them eliminate the "centuries-old time-consuming methods of hand plowing their fathers used." They had plowed 2,000 acres of land by the time the article was printed, and could handle the mechanics of a tractor with ease.
With a native North Dakotan at the wheel, is it a wonder?
Sources:
The Bismarck Tribune, Tuesday, September 2, 1947