Wartime culture in Guilin, 1938-1944 : a city at war /

Guilin, a small town in south China, is famous for its dramatic landscape of karst hills. During China's war with Japan in the 1930s and 1940s, it attracted refugees from east China, including many famous left-wing writers and artists. Zhu (history, Univ. of Idaho) explains why they chose Guilin. Geographically, it was not as exposed to Japanese air attack. More important, though, it was ruled by the so-called Guangxi clique of warlords, who attempted to maintain political autonomy in defiance of the Nationalist regime of Chiang Kai-shek. Guangxi militarists encouraged refugee intellectuals to make Guilin a cultural center. Zhu offers an impressive list of the novels, poetry, newspapers, and plays produced there and an analysis of the city's connections with the Nationalists based in Chongqing and the Chinese Communists based in Yan'an. The final chapter discusses foreigners who visited, including the Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh and the writer Ernest Hemingway. The author utilizes much Chinese-language scholarship on Guilin, such as an intriguing section on efforts to persuade Japanese POWs to renounce Japanese militarism. Of most interest to specialists on China's wartime culture. Summing Up: Recommended. Most academic levels/libraries. --Kristin Eileen Stapleton, State University of New York at Buffalo