 to be the same city I had known 20 years before when I first came to China as a young reporter. A city of tree-lined avenues, of a culture recorded in millennia, whose monuments dated in centuries. But I soon learned Peking was full of new sights and sounds. The parade was just a rehearsal for National Day. It is Communist China's leading holiday. Celebrations go on for two days. They were carrying banners supporting Joe and Lai's demands for the liberation of Taiwan. They were full of enthusiasm. Taiwan must be liberated. United States, get out of Taiwan, they said. At that moment, the communists were shelling Kimoy. Tiananmen, Peking's red square, was quiet. Only a few petty cabs and buses moved around. The Chinese characters say, long live the people's Republic of China. Long live the solidarity of the peoples of the world. On National Day, the square would be filled. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese would be on hand to watch. Here the Chinese communists staged their biggest rallies. The men in the street underneath my hotel window were building a sewer. The work went on 24 hours a day. I found out later this was part of a program. On Tiananmen Square, some men were reading anti-American protest letters posted on a cloth bulletin board. All over the city propaganda signs and anti-American posters. Hate America, they said, liberate Taiwan. But most of all, they advertised the leap forward, a nationwide program affecting all Chinese life, industry, agriculture, even sports. Near Tiananmen, there were some of the militia including a few girls. They were playing cards or other games. The people's militia is organized by provinces and military districts. Reserves for the army are trained. Although all ages 18 to 45 have to serve, most young Chinese enter the militia from the youth organizations. They are indoctrinated in communism. They stand guard, take part in major celebrations, appear on many occasions. Girls are encouraged to join. These girls are reading recruitment notices. Traffic was filling the streets. Chinese pedal to work. Headicabs are used for carrying small loads. Men pull heavy loads. There were cars, buses, carts. I saw Russian cars which the Chinese have begun to make. There were wood burning buses of the type I had seen in Europe during the war. Vehicles of all kinds, in most places of the city. There was a good traffic control system. This truck was pulling a string of trailers. Carrying a load of coke for steel making in the leap forward. The people moved among the ancient monuments of their city. They were dressed in many different ways. Men in uniforms or trousers and shirts. Women wearing trousers or dresses. A trip to Peking's outskirts passed the monument to the people's heroes. The Catholic Church and apartment buildings and government offices. There were many more apartment buildings than I had seen in the Soviet Union. The new planetarium was opened. It has become a popular place for visitors to its observatory and exhibition hall. Construction was going on everywhere. It was mostly hand labor. Manpower is Communist China's greatest resource. Colorful fabrics in a Peking textile factory. One of three in Peking. This modern plant employs many women. Three, seven and a half hour shifts daily keep the plant at peak capacity. This was the factory canteen. These girls lived in dormitory rooms nearby. Forty-five minutes a day away from work to nurse their babies. A new maternity hospital. Part of it is still under construction. Most of Communist China's workers and government employees come under an extensive socialized medical program. A clinic provides on-the-job care. I visited a worker's family in one of the apartments near the factory. Five people occupied a small apartment for which they paid about $1.20 a month rent. Kitchen facilities in a courtyard. The main hall of the agricultural exhibition. Open May 1st to display machines and implements China is making for the leaf forward. A display of fabrics for export. Visitors arrive from the province's 500 at a time for a week's tour. Half a million have visited the fair since it opened. This was a new rice transplant. They had more than 30,000 different implements. From the crudest hand-sickle to this giant combine, they had more than 170 different types of tractors. Steam, coal burning, gasoline, diesel. They claimed to have built many in the last five months. Hours of widely varying designs. Turbines of all types were on display. Locomotives for China's new railroads. This was the only steam shovel I saw in China. But this was only the beginning, they said. The leaf forward was only the first step toward China's advanced economic progress. An exhibition of irrigation machinery ranged from steam power to small gasoline motors. Even put in hand treadle. A solar cooker. It was a featured exhibit. Outside the fair grounds there was a pool. Here, watched by their waiting elders, children played pool fish in the pools of the summer palace. A reminder of China's past. Once, these grounds were the private preserve of an Empress's pleasure-loving court. She spent part of a naval budget on this marble boat. Under the Communist regime, these grounds are now a park for China's workers. No elephants on the way to the Ming tombs. A gate built five centuries ago, entrance to the tombs, imperial place of emperors of the imperial days. The Communist regime has made it into a park. Even put trash boxes in convenient places. Construction of a reservoir near the tombs. They were hoisting the stone with an arrangement of ropes and bamboo poles. With almost no machinery, they do not lack manpower. This was staging for a concrete arch bridge. Thousands of volunteer laborers worked here. Many of them were soldiers. A Chinese Communist official told me that soldiers are expected to work as well as fight. A commune north of Peking. The big new project here is deep plowing. They start with a furrow of foot deep. Then go deeper. Two about 18 inches. Plow deep to bury the American aggressor is the slogan. The commune is virtually self-sustaining. They make their own tools. They do their own repairs. 4,100 people live on this commune. 970 families. 1,600 workers. A comparatively small commune in Communist China in the year of the leap following. Leading crops are corn, billet vegetables. Their vegetables are excellent. Irrigation pump, one donkey power model. These women were thrushing billet. Children are excused from school and brought here in a group during the harvest season. Education and labor go together in Communist China. Much of their corn is very poor. Some of it was fairly good. Everyone, young and old, works during the fall harvest. These are student volunteer workers. Young men and women from Peking universities and high schools. On weekends they work on farms and roads around Peking. This group had a loud speaker with news commentaries about Taiwan and commercials about why they should work hard. For the great leap forward, donkey carts were main means of transportation out here. People in the area followed these carts picking up vegetables, beans, seeds. Nothing can be wasted in the leap forward. A trip to the Great Wall took us past rows of workers apartments. We passed camel caravans coming in from the north. Loaded with grain, wool and other products. And herds driven to market how they built it over 2,000 years ago is still a mystery. The regime has restored some of it. Made it into a park. There were even signs out here. Support the conservation program. With Lynn, my interpreter, I climbed the wall. Then I thought of what China's millions are doing today and its building did not seem so mysterious. Apartments in Shenyang, heart of industrial manchuria. About 15,000 of Shenyang's workers were housed in this area. These apartments had their own schools, garden plots, canteens. Knock on any door, they said. This woman had six small children. The family occupied one room. Her husband was a lathe operator in machinery plant number one. Women have to teach children sanitation. Educate them before the state takes over. This little girl holding a fly swatter is proud of her part in the killed pests campaign. Shenyang developed during the Japanese occupation when it was called Mukten. In the state department store, photographs of model employees are posted on a bulletin board. A wide variety of goods were sold in this store. Although prices were very high, there were many buyers. A crowd gathered in the street nearby. They were shooting a movie. Following the new socialist realism in movies, this scene was shot outside and had a script grill. Chinese Communist motion pictures carry much of their propaganda in the Leave Forward campaign. This is Vice Director Ye Sun Ping. Of machinery plant number one, it produces 7 to 800 lays per month. One of three in Shenyang, it was destroyed during the war, later restored and enlarged. These were based on an East German design. Completed lays were created. The crates were then rolled to the railroad loading platform. It was all hand labor here. This is the Shenyang Cable Factory and Director Lin Ming Yu. Here, 4,500 workers make cable of all sizes, both aluminum and copper. All processes were completed in this plant, which the Communists enlarged following the 1949 takeover. They claim production was 12 times greater than it had been during the Japanese occupation and 20 times more than during the nationalist days. Posters calling the United States bandits and telling the people to surpass United States production. Other posters call for production to rise like a Sputnik. This was the plant production chart. Red flags are Sputniks. You're a Sputnik or you're an Ox Card. And nobody wants to be an Ox Card these days. As in Peking, young students lined up for volunteer labor camps. These are young pioneers and members of the youth league. Outside Shenyang, these women moving earth were preparing land for a fire brick factory. The Communists have gone all out to get women's interest and participation in all their programs, especially during the leap forward. I found this was the best way to get their cooperation for these pictures. I visited a commune on the outskirts of Shenyang. This was the headquarters of a new commune. It had been founded only five days before my arrival. The chairman Liu Chenyang, 42, headed 60,000 people working about 65,000 acres. Ten factories were also located here. Hogs were the most important product. The chairman told me there were 17,000. Recent communist agricultural policy in the communes caused for close planting, deep plowing, plentiful use of fertilizer and irrigation. The chairman told me that this commune hoped to add 3,000 families, about 18,000 more acres, and to increase food production during the next year. It rained on my return trip. I was stuck fast in Manchurian mud. It had to get help from one of the farmers nearby. The Fushun oil plant. Here, oil is extracted from coal. Built in 1928 by the Japanese, destroyed during the war, it was restored and enlarged. The Japanese produced 225,000 tons of petroleum in their best year. 1957 production was 320,000 tons. 1958 gold, 440,000 to catch up with them. Chief of office was Dong Guan. He advised me to put on a mask for my tour of the plant. Young laboratory technicians are the plant staff. They are among the highest paid of the 7,500 workers, which include 500 women. The Fushun open pit mines. Hydraulic mining is much used here. After mining, the coal is loaded on cable cars. Then haul to the surface. Cars are automatically dumped. Some of the raw materials from these mines goes to Anshan, the steel company of Anshan. Located 55 miles southwest of Shenyang, it employs over 100,000, including 6,000 women. One-third of communist China's steel production comes from these mills, about 3 million tons a year. Under the leap forward, they are trying to increase this to 4 million tons. Coal comes from the Fushun mines. The plant also has its own department store, canteen and club. Built during the Japanese occupation, the plant has been restored and enlarged following wartime destruction. All kinds of steel products are made. They have 10 open-heart furnaces. It takes about 8 and a half hours to run a batch through during the leap forward. An improvement over earlier production figures. Fails and other products are here being run through. They had just opened a Vesema converter. This production has added the output of many small furnaces like this one. This plant made 30,000 tons of steel a year. And everywhere in China, near industrial plants and on communes, small furnaces have added their output to the big mills. We are determined to liberate Taiwan. And route from Peking to Tien Sin, we passed through an intensively cultivated region. Crops here were corn and sorghum. As we neared the city, increasing signs of recent industrial growth, Tien Sin is a sprawling city of over 2 million. Located 70 miles southeast of Peking, it is a major industrial and transportation center. We drove through streets crowded with pedicabs and carts. Groups of students and office workers practicing for the national day parade. The city gave every appearance of rapid growth. New sewer pipes in the city's outskirts. I also saw many new buildings in this section. This is Ha Qin, director of a plant which made paper from blue grass. Workers at this plant designed and built the paper making machinery. They were also building a little furnace for the leap forward. The furnace was on the plant premises. The workers were still building it. And they couldn't wait to charge it. Just to help in the liberation of Taiwan, they expected to make 14 tons of steel daily in this furnace. These women winding copper wire belonged to a neighborhood co-op of 380 families. In communist China, they are considered to be emancipated from housework to support socialist construction. This co-op was part of a much larger commune of 12,000 households. Communal cooking, save coal which was used for the leap forward. The commune had its own nursery. Mothers took turns looking after children. This little boy was singing about the leap forward. This old man was angry over Taiwan. The co-op maintained a home for the agent. I visited some of the rooms occupied by old people, like this woman with bound feet. Waters were neat and clean with quite washed walls. I stopped at a park just outside the city. I visited the Tianzhen Second Worker Sanatorium. Completed in 1955, the buildings were in the Chinese style. The hospital has 800 beds. Patients organized their own entertainment. All workers in Tianzhen are eligible. Patients attend classes. These girls are knitting as they walk in the gardens. Treatment is for mild cases only and lasts three to six months. South of Tianzhen was the Shuanlin State Park. One of the few in communist China. Everyone exercises at 10 o'clock. This was at the rear of the headquarters. Conduct donation lectures are part of all communist programs. Chinese are subjected to constant propaganda. This was formally swamp land. Now they reported getting good production. At nearby Xingli Village, they were experimenting with rice. Irrigation here was fairly advanced. These water wheels were run by a 15 horsepower motor. The experimental plot where they are working with hybrid rice scenes. They are so proud of it, they even have their own cameraman. They have bamboo poles to keep the rice from trampling. Lights have been installed to keep it growing 24 hours a day. Is the rice they claim is yielding 11,000 bushels and acre. It was raining in Nanking when I arrived. The narrow streets appeared little changed. But I learned that Nanking's population had swelled from just under a million in 1949 to two and a half million. Industrial expansion was behind this road. Truck and auto parts were piled high in the yard of the Nanking Auto Plan. Three years ago this plant was making wagons. Now it is turning out trucks and a few cars. Machinery is Chinese, Czech and Russian. They were cutting these plastic strips to be used in making small cars. Is Qiqang. He is the plant manager. Four thousand workers on a primitive assembly line. Many are women. And on the plant grounds a small furnace was also turning out steel for parts. A chemical factory where 10,000 workers turned out fertilizers and commercial chemicals. We could see the factory as we approached. Workers at this plant had built 80 small furnaces on the plant grounds. Posters with anti-American and Taiwan themes were linked with the leap forward production. This was a Buddhist temple. Within its confines is the shrine of the 10,000 Buddhas. 50 priests take care of the temple and conduct services. This priest told me that quite a few people still worship at the temple. I arrived at the Catholic Church just as mass ended. It was the only Catholic Church in the city. The priest told me that there were 200 or 300 people in the parish. The Sanyatsen tomb. It is Nanking's most prominent communist shrine. Rice patties and water buffalo on the way to Shanghai. It had rained hard and the rice was beaten down. Some of the rice was green. Some ready for harvest. Shanghai Bund. The famous waterfront with modern buildings. The communists have built a park along the Wang Po. Construction in the city everywhere for the leap forward. The Sino-Soviet friendship building. A cultural center to further the common bond between the two communist giants. Like P. King, traffic screened through the streets. I passed many factories. I was on my way to visit a fountain pen plant. I was greeted by the manager, Chi Feng Lu. Pens made here, called Hero, were modeled on the Parker 51. Ketchup with Parker was the plant slogan. I saw many young workers and students here. This was Chunkan Chu. He is saying, get American troops out of Taiwan. This is the Long Machang Chen commune. Here, 586 workers from 385 families cultivate about 600 acres of vegetables. Militia men to guard the commune gates. There was some mechanization on this commune, but most of the work was done by hand. Tractors were used for deep plowing. They reported 7 to 21 crops of vegetables a year. From post and fertilizer, both animal and human was used in this intensive cultivation. Many kinds of vegetables were raised. They also had an experimental plot where they were trying out new irrigation. Corn was raised and used for feeding. The commune reported grossing $270,000 worth of products in 1957. A tree of all kinds was raised. Chickens near an old pill box. Reminder of the Japanese occupation. Busy streets and busy days in Central China's Tri-City area. Hancao, Xinjiang, Wuchang. Together called Wuhan. In the 4th district of Wuhan a big new steel plant was under construction. When completed it will rival Anshan. Workers swarmed on the grounds underneath wooden scaffolding. They dug and shoveled. They pounded and tamped. Or is shipped in 60 miles by railroad. It is unloaded automatically in the plant yards. Cars are placed on a turnover. Then over she goes. Making went on inside the plant while construction continued outside. Their goal was 3.5 million tons of steel a year by 1961. To catch up with Britain, heavy machinery at the plant was furnished by the Soviet Union. And near the plant these new workers' apartments. 40 miles from Hancao, a new engineering college had been built on land once used for farming. Here 7,500 students were taught steel making and mechanical and electrical engineering following communist policy of learning and labor. Classrooms are run like factory shops. And under the leap forward students built lays and electric motors. Students are also sent to villages to help with technical problems. Purpose of all education in communist China is to build socialism. The Wuhan meat processing plant also built with Soviet health. Hogs are shipped to this plant from Hopei province. Killed with electric shock. 3,000 workers use up to date equipment. They are cutting the hogs up with an electric saw. Ladders are used in packing sausages. 40% of this production goes to the Soviet Union. And route to the Su Kwan. On this people's commune there are over 60,000 who cultivate about 30,000 acres of cotton rice and wheat. They claim production almost doubled in this two crop region after the organization of the commune. Commune farms challenge each other and everyone is organized for production. On this experimental plot they claim they were producing 1,000 catties of cotton per acre. This was an increase of approximately 800% over pre-commune days. Young children of working mothers are cared for at the commune nursery school. Older children work on the commune where they set their own production goals. The commune was building its own furnaces. They intended to build five small factories to produce 8,000 tons of steel a year for commune implements in equipment. The commune also operated its own ore lines. These men and boys were pounding ore. They sifted and shoveled coal getting ready to charge the furnaces. Students of the commune middle school had their own furnace. Nearby was a larger one belonging to the commune. Workers were enthusiastic. They said they were working to accelerate socialism. Working for the leap forward and against American aggression. Here one team works on the bellows and other charges the furnace. This was the new bridge across the Yangtze. Opened in 1957, the steel trust bridge has a highway on the upper deck, a railway below. A Chinese junk blown gently before the warm South China wind. The smell of the river and the creaking of the orlocks of the river sampans. The voices of the people who live on them. This was the old Canton. Under the communists, Canton was known as the city of revolution. From the top of the 14 story Oikuan hotel, the Pearl river once jammed with boats was comparatively empty. The houseboats were still used to carry passengers and cargo. Baskets of fruit piled for shipment. Surrounding Guangdong province is a rich bread basket. And Canton is also the center of an extensive light industry. On the waterfront, incessant activity. Constantly changing. This little boy wears a K-Pok life preserve. Playing along the waterfront, he may fall into the water. If he does, the sack will keep him afloat. Excitable and talkative Cantonese are far different from the North Chinese. My interpreter had difficulty in understanding the three commonly spoken Cantonese dialects. Under the communists, this colorful waterfront life has changed drastically. Many of the sampan people are being forced to move and live ashore, where the communists can better control them. This is ran to the suburbs. He visited a commune on which vegetables were raised. It was in the wide-flung agricultural section surrounding Canton. This is a two crop a year region, ready for mechanization. It was difficult to believe that the small plots would lend themselves to the use of machinery. Here, hand labor would probably always remain at a premium. It is less than a hundred miles from Canton. In the new territories outside Hong Kong, the landscape is like that of Guangdong. Water buffalo and men and women working in rice fields. It was raining when I reached the border checkpoint. I had to walk a couple of hundred yards and wait at the border station a couple of hours for a train. This library named after the vice president was a reminder I was back in the free world. It was September 29th, two days before the Chinese Communist National Day. The British had brought out tanks and soldiers were marching to their posts in case of incidents. Around in a rickshaw, they were forbidden on the mainland. The girls in Peking were nothing like this. The sky itself seemed brighter, lighter, freer. In the bay were the many sounds of a big fort. Creaking of Chinese sailing craft. The big boat whistled and was among them. And I stood at the rail and watched Hong Kong's white buildings against its steep green slopes and thought about China's lead forward.