While the author had to wait for five years to see his work on the Korean War (1950-53) finally come off the press, the book, titled New China's First War, was already well known among Chinese military fans both inside and outside the Chinese mainland.
Last December, six months before CPC History Press published his book, the author Shuang Shi, a senior engineer with a local TV network in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province in Southwest China, received a "royalty" of US$3,000 from a former army officer in Taiwan Province.
Formerly a "political instructor" in the Kuomintang army, the Taiwanese officer, who prefers to remain anonymous, says he tried but failed to find a publisher in the island province who would turn the book into print.
"Some people on this island are narrow-minded with limited knowledge of history," says the officer.
So he distributed CDs of Shuang Shi's book at meetings of a non-governmental organization, and told those who showed an interest to read it first and see if they liked it.
If they did, he said, they could send some money, whatever they wished to give, to the author through him.
"Several friends also helped sell the discs in the same way, letting people read before they decided to pay," he says. "I got a sum of money from them by the end of last November and when I added in mine, it totaled US$3,000."
The Taiwanese officer says that quite a few local readers "were deeply moved" by the history Shuang Shi recorded.
"We did not know that we Chinese had a history like this, that can move one to praise and tears," he said. "My friends and I all feel that the Korean War indeed earned China an international reputation."
Tan Yiqing, editor of the 900,000-character book at CPC History Press, noted that it is a "miracle" in the publishing industry for an unprinted book to have such an impact on readers across the Taiwan Straits, through CDs.
Among the unusual admirers of the book is retired Lieutenant General Li Jijun, a noted strategist and former commander of the 38th Corps of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, an ace unit that fought in the Korean War.
"I didn't think much of it when I first got the draft of the book from a friend about six months ago," says Li, a Korean War veteran himself. "I've read too much about that war and few books have impressed me."
But Shuang Shi's book is different. Two days after Li started reading it, he called a friend, Yun Shan, an editor with Outlook Weekly, to ask Yun to convey his regards to the author, who was unknown to him, "as a veteran of the Korean War."
"It's the best book on that war that I have ever read," he writes in the Preface to Shuang Shi's book. "It could be 'the book of a lifetime' for many people."
Born after the last group of Chinese People's Volunteers returned from the Korean Peninsular in 1958, Shuang Shi, which is the amateur military historian's IP name "Two Stones," has no personal experience of the war. Although he once served in the PLA Air Force, Shuang Shi, whose real name is Zhou Jun, has never fought in any battle.
Limited as his military experience is, he is, nonetheless, crazy about military history. He loves to read accounts of various battles following them on maps, and visits all kinds of war veterans whenever he has a chance -- commanders or common soldiers.
He is so familiar with the facts of military history that at the mention of the name of the commander of any unit at or above the regiment level, he can give the history of the unit, battles it has fought, main achievements and its present whereabouts.
He says he is especially intrigued by the performance of participants in the Korean War, from commanders to soldiers, on both sides.
Through a meticulous study of both Chinese and western records of the war, and through interviews with many war survivors, he came to the conclusion that "through this war, New China demonstrated its strength, which its opponents remembered for several decades, and washed away the nation's century-old humiliation, established national pride, and laid the foundation for the enduring stability which has blessed China to this day."
The idea to write his analytical account of the first war the one-year-old People's Republic was dragged into came from a dispute over the war on the Internet.
A "networkaholic" who spends at least four hours online every day, Shuang Shi says he got caught up in an argument with some netizens who were trying to negate China's involvement in the war.
"I argued with them in various military websites' discussion rooms, basing my points on the historical facts I had gathered," he recalls. "Then it occurred to me that I should write a book about the war embodying my own point of view."
He chased after the story of every hero he heard about, his digging into the story of a soldier named Wang Heliang being a good example. In a battle during the war, at a place that later became known as "Heart-Break Ridge," Wang Heliang was seriously wounded and blinded. His squad leader Xue Zhigao was also disabled, his left leg broken, in a bombing raid.
Yet the two men, the only surviving soldiers of the squad, did not retreat. Blinded Wang carried Xue on his back and, under the guidance of Xue, continued to move forward firing at the enemy.
Xue perished together with the enemy forces, but Wang survived. Both were given special merit citations and made second-rank heroes. The 474-word official record of the battle ended there.
The record moved Shuang Shi, but he was never satisfied. Xue died a martyr. But what about Wang? Was he sent to a welfare institution for disabled soldiers, or did he go back home? Was he still alive? How had he been living in the years since the war? Shuang Shi could not let this hero go, although he seemed to have evaporated.
Shuang Shi tried to locate Wang through all the people he knew in Wang's former unit. But nobody could tell him, as there were too many heroes in that battle. His only clue was that Wang was from Santai County in his native home province, Sichuan.
He began to ask all the officials from Santai about Wang, but to no avail. With a population of 1 million, Santai was home to 1,500 volunteer soldiers who fought in the Korean War.
Months after he sent a letter to the civil affairs department of the Santai government inquiring about Wang, Shuang Shi finally got a response. Wang was sent home for medical treatment after the battle and returned to Sichuan at the end of 1953. He was appointed a deputy to the first Provincial People's Congress of Sichuan and could have had a job in Chengdu. But he was not used to city life and insisted on going back home.
He lived on government pension until his death in March 1991, of disease complications.
Upon receiving this information, Shuang Shi drove 100 kilometers from Chengdu to Santai the first weekend he had a chance to visit Wang's family.
"The only word I could use to describe what I saw was 'poverty'," said Shuang Shi. "There was nothing of value except for a TV set and a plaque carrying the words 'Hero of Special Class Merit,' presented to him by the local government in 1954."
"Wang never allowed his family to ask for help from the government, saying he was fortunate compared with his comrades who laid down their lives in the war," added the writer.
He donated some money to the family to show his respect, and brought back with him Wang's written account of his battle experience.
"He used simple words to explain what pushed him on after he was blinded," Shuang Shi says. "He didn't want his homeland to become another Korea, where he could walk a whole day without seeing a single house left standing after the US bombing attacks, and people were starving.
"He also noted that in traveling from the southwest of his country to the battlefields in the Northeast, the peasant-turned soldier saw for the first time how great his motherland was and was determined to defend it."
"New China's First War is dedicated to Wang Heliang and his comrades-in-arms," Shuang Shi says. "Although they can never read it, I nevertheless wish to tell them that they have changed every one of us Chinese, changed our history."
His only regret about the book is that he was not able to conduct field research on the former battlefields.
Yet this regret is more or less compensated for by his field trips to the battlefields of the Red Army in the 1930s, since he is not interested in the Korean War alone.
"I'm equally interested in the history of the Red Army and the War of Resistance against Japan (1937-45)," he says.
His dream now is to complete his retracing of the route of the Red Army's Long March from East China's Jiangxi to northwestern Shaanxi on motorcycle next year, which marks the 70th anniversary of the great maneuver of the Communist-led army to break out of Kuomintang encirclement.
Because he didn't have enough money or time for the project, Shuang Shi has divided the trip into sections and is completing them one at a time by motorcycle. So far he has covered all the routes taken by the Red Army in Sichuan, including the snow-covered mountainous areas inhabited by the Yi ethnic minority.
The trips have led to a number of articles on that part of history, which represent an analytical account of the Red Army's experience in outwitting their much better-armed opponents.
Shuang Shi spends almost all of his holidays and weekends on his personal version of the Long March, enduring hardship in the pursuit of his interest in history.
He says he is not lonely on his journey. "Not only do the Red Army heroes live in my heart," he says. "More and more young people in my motorcycle club have joined me in trekking along the Red Army's routes, and they find the experience just as exhilarating as I do."
(China Daily July 26, 2004)
