In the morning I inspected my traveling companions and found a youth and a handsome old man with a wisp of gray beard sitting opposite me, sipping bitter tea. Presently the youth spoke to me, in formalities at first, and then inevitably of politics. I discovered that his wife’s uncle was a railway official and that he was traveling with a pass. He was on his way back to Szechuan, his native province, which he had left seven years before. But he was not sure that he would be able to visit his home town after all. Bandits were reported to be operating near there.
“You mean Reds?”
“Oh, no, not Reds, although there are Reds in Szechuan, too. No, I mean bandits.”
“But aren’t the Reds also bandits?” I asked out of curiosity. “The newspapers always call them Red bandits or Communist bandits.”
“Ah, but you must know that the editors must call them bandits because they are ordered to do so by Nanking,” he explained. “If they called them Communists or revolutionaries that would prove they were Communists themselves.”
“But in Szechuan don’t people fear the Reds as much as the bandits?”
“Well, that depends. The rich men fear them, and the landlords, and the officials and tax collectors, yes. But the peasants do not fear them. Sometimes they welcome them.” Then he glanced apprehensively at the old man, who sat listening intently, and yet seeming not to listen. “You see,” he continued, “the peasants are too ignorant to understand that the Reds only want to use them. They think the Reds really mean what they say.”
“But they don’t mean it?”
“My father wrote to me that they did abolish usury and opium in the Sungpan [Szechuan], and that they redistributed the land there. So you see they are not exactly bandits. They have principles, all right. But they are wicked men. They kill too many people.”
Then surprisingly the greybeard lifted his gentle face and with perfect composure made an astonishing remark.
“Sha pu kou/” he said. “They don’t kill enough!” We both looked at him flabbergasted.
