Soldiers of the Eighth Route Army appeared in the fourth issue of the Pictorial in 1943 as part of the two-page photo-essay “The Victories of the Jin-Cha-Ji Eighth Route Army” that reported statistics and facts on the battles in which the Army took part it during the months of May, June and July 1943. The photograph, taken by Sha Fei in 1937, shows three Eighth Route Army soldiers—two clearly visible in the foreground, one hidden by the grass in the middle ground—defending the territories adjacent to the Great Wall. The soldiers are shown in full combat gear, with their rifles and guns pointed at the enemy who, although not visible, is understood as the Japanese army. The Great Wall divides the space of the photograph but also separates the Chinese nation, protected by the Eighth Route Army, and what lies beyond it, the invisible and yet very perceivable danger of the Japanese army.
37
Figure 23: Sha Fei, ‘Soldiers of the Eighth Route Army Fighting Over the Great Wall,’ Sha Fei Papers, Box 1, Hoover Institution Archives, copyright Stanford University.
38 The subject of this image are not only the soldiers in the foreground, but also the Great Wall that runs along the mountains and occupies most of the image’s internal space.
The feeling that the Great Wall runs endlessly along the mountains is given by the angle from which the shot was taken, and by the style chosen by Sha Fei. The composition of the photograph was influenced by traditional Chinese landscape painting techniques: the layering of the foreground—very detailed and usually darker in colour—with a less defined middle ground and a misty, almost blurred background that usually featured towering mountain peaks. This technique, which is very different from Western linear perspective, makes the viewer shift their attention from the top part of the image to the lower part.79 By pairing this painting technique to the top-right to bottom-left construction of Chinese images, we can see how the viewers would firstly see the Great Wall and then the soldiers. Based on this, it can be argued that Sha Fei constructed the image so as to create a visual and ideological connection between the Great Wall, that always had been protecting China from the invaders for centuries, and the Communist Army that was defending China during the Anti-Japanese War.
The narratives of the Great Wall as protector of the nation since times immemorial and the Eighth Route Army being the only ones fighting for China’s freedom was not historically accurate. Sha Fei, and the Party of course, were constructing a new history that wanted to place the Eighth Route Army and the CCP as the legitimate guides for the new China, the ones that, almost single-handedly, saved the nation from the Japanese advance just like the Great Wall had protected China for centuries. It follows that these types of images were constructed with a clear goal: to link the past and the future of China to the CCP.
79 David B. Greene, “Handscroll Landscape Paintings of the Song Period and Their Tightening Perspective,” Oriental Art 39, no. 3 (Autumn 1993), p. 20.
39 In the case of this specific image, an article on photographic manipulation by Gao and Wang explains how Sha Fei decided to place the soldiers on the outside of the Great Wall with the rifles pointed towards the inside, a choice that clearly contradicts the meaning the photograph wanted to convey.80 However, thanks to this deliberate decision, Sha Fei created an image that was both aesthetically and ideologically powerful. It can therefore be argued that the value of the photograph lies not in the truthful representation of what the Eighth Route Army soldiers were doing, but in the “ideological stance” that the photographer had in mind and in how the image was consequently perceived by the viewers. 81 Moreover, as Wu stresses in his analysis on Communist photographs “the editing of the image makes it even more real” as the aim of propaganda images is not about the factual representation of a person or an event, but about the idealisation of it.82 These images, although staged or modified, were still ideologically real as they were what people were ready to believe and relate to on the basis of their beliefs and hopes for the future.
The photograph was taken at the Xifengkou pass, a very important location in the military history of China, as it was one of the most important passes on the Yanshan mountain range in the Hebei province. The Xifengkou pass takes its name from a Qin legend that narrates the story of a father who went looking for his son after he had been sent away to work on the Great Wall. When they finally met on the hills surrounding the pass, their happiness was so great that they laughed themselves to death. The pass was consequently named Xifengkou, Happy Meeting Mouth.83 Aside from the legend, the pass had a strategic defensive role as it was the
80 Chu Gao and Shuo Wang, eds., “Photographic Manipulation in China: A Conversation between Fu Yu and Gao Chu,” Composite Realities: The Art of Photographic Manipulation in Asia 6, no. 1 (Fall 2015), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7977573.0006.104.
81 Ibidem.
82 Wu Hung, Zooming in…, p. 216.
83 D. Larraine Andrews, Great Walks of the World (Rocky Mountain Books Incorporated, 2014), p. 62.
40 location where many battles in the defence of China from northern enemies were fought. This section of the Great Wall was built in the early years of the Ming dynasty under the directions of the famous General Xuda (1332-1385). Few centuries later in 1630 the Manchus used the same pass to reach Beijing and conquer it.84
In modern times, the Xifengkou pass saw one of the fiercest battles of the early years of the Anti-Japanese War. In 1933, the nationalist general Song Zheyuan (1885-1940 CE) strenuously fought against the Japanese at Xifengkou, but lost the battle due to inadequate military equipment. Because of this defeat, the Chinese troops consequently retreated into the territories behind the Great Wall.85 This battle was followed by the Tanggu Truce, an agreement between Chiang Kai Shek and the Japanese Army that was supposed to bring stability in northern China. The truce was signed in May 1933 in Tianjin and saw the creation of a demilitarised zone that ran for a hundred kilometres between south of the Great Wall and north of Beijing where the Chinese troops were not allowed to enter while Japanese troops could still fly over the area.86
It is in this context of territorial losses and disruption of society that the need for strong, relatable symbols became the centre of the CCP’s propaganda strategies.
The urgency to bring the people together to fight against the Japanese invasion, was paired with the ultimate goal of building political consent to ultimately run the country. The fact that China was being violated by a foreign invader was exploited
84 Wai-Yee Li, “Heroic Transformations: Women and National Trauma in Early Qing Literature,”
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 59, no. 2 (December 1999), p. 371.
85 The grandiosity of the battle was such that it is narrated that the Chinese troops fought even with the traditional dadao (大刀) swords. This weapon was so famous that inspired one of the most famous nationalist songs of the Anti-Japanese War, “The Sword March.” The first line reads: “Our dadao raised over the devils’ heads. Hack them off!”
86 Parks M. Coble, China’s War Reporters: The Legacy of Resistance against Japan (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015), p. 14; Philip S. Jowett, China’s Wars: Rousing the Dragon, 1894-1949 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2013), p. 197; Peter Gue Zarrow, China in War and Revolution, 1895-1949, Asia’s Transformations (London; New York: Routledge, 2005), p. 268.
41 by the Communist leadership to draw a connection between the past foreign and the current Japanese one. This connection was created by transforming the Great Wall into the physical symbol of the past—and present—resistance against the other.
The Great Wall also became a reminder of China’s glorious history. Through this connection, the Communist Party was able to put itself at the centre of this re-invented historical narrative and appear as the legitimate and only guide for a new China. In the pages of the Pictorial, a consistent number of images feature soldiers on portions of the Great Wall or evocative images of the Great Wall. In the image below for instance, a group of soldiers were immortalised while celebrating after having recaptured of one of the towers that are part of the Great Wall. Sha Fei’s photograph of one of the Great Wall’s towers (figure 24) was used as front cover for the first issue of the Pictorial in 1942. Figure 26 instead was the feature photograph in the third issue in 1943. The image evoked the endlessness of the Great Wall and its political and military importance through the caption “Hebei is ours” (Hebei shi womende).
42
Figure 24: Sha Fei, ‘Soldiers Celebrating Victory over the Great Wall’, 1937, Sha Fei Papers, Box 1, Hoover Institution Archives, copyright Stanford University.
43
Figure 25: Front Cover of the First Issue, Jin Cha Ji Pictorial, 1942.
44
Figure 26: Photographer Unknown, “Hebei is Ours”, Jin Cha Ji Pictorial, Issue n. 3, May 1943.
45 The emergence of the Chinese national awareness and the consequent need for national symbols can be therefore understood as the result of an external military and cultural threat. While Japanese nationalism was outward-directed as it took the form of imperialism based on the idea of Japanese racial supremacy in the Asian continent, Chinese nationalism was an “inward-directed sentiment” whose purpose was to keep the country together.87 It is exactly in this context then that the Great Wall was chosen and used to symbolise the everlasting and allegedly always existed strength and unity of China.