China strife and survival

This story originally ran in the Sunday Review section of the Philadelphia Inquirer on Sept. 26, 1999.

BEJING —His eyes are clouded with the milky veil of cataracts. One lid droops. But they can see the past clearly. With a blink, 82-year-old Zhong Renhui summons up a morning 50 years ago when he was a soldier in a Red Army garrison in the craggy mountains of southwestern Guizhou province.

It is Oct. 1, 1949. All the troops are huddled around radios straining to hear the scratchy broadcast from Beijing, more than a thousand miles away. Mao Tse-tung stands at a podium at the Gate of Heavenly Peace in front of the Forbidden City. He declares the creation of a communist nation - the People's Republic of China.