“Although the General is Fat and 56 he has plenty of energy for Sword Games with his Troops!” Chinese Warlord Ma Hongkui, 1948Ma Hongkui was a Hui (Muslim Han) KMT warlord, who fled to San Francisco in 1948, after having been accused of “frustrating the fulfilment of the military plan” and failing to defeat the Communists, and became a horse breeder until his death on 1970.
Sounds like a life lived full of adventure, with an easy ability to adapt to changing circumstances.
Reminds me a bit of Anthony Poshepny (Tony Po), who ran the CIA's secret war in Laos for a while. I went to Tony Po's funeral in San Francisco. The great and near great were there.
ReplyDeleteAs a KMT party member and therefore anti-communist, Ma would have been a bit unlikely to use the "running dog" terminology. (Actually the Chinese phrase translates as "walking dog" or "[to] go dog" and is not intrinsically tied to communism, but in the West it seems inseparably tied to being a red. Okay, /pedantry=off)
ReplyDeleteThanks for this, BTW. I was unaware of Hui KMT members. Traditionally Islam was known as Hui jiao (literally "Hui religion") in China, though the PRC apparently now has some more "inclusive" and PC term. Also traditional is the saying which translates to "Believers in Hui jiao are NOT reasonable people," with the clear implication that gentle persuasion and "can't we all get along" doesn't work with such people, and the only recourse is overwhelming force, or credible threat of same.
When I typed out the heading, I thought that a Kuomintang guy wouldn't say that, but I couldn't help myself, it just went so well with the pose. Leave it to the Chinese to coin a memorable phrase like "Running dogs of Capitalism." So much fun.
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