Chinese Literature
to do next. I could hear Tsui Yi shouting away, though I could see the three bodyguards had stopped where they were. I snatched up a telescope and looked at him. Now I could see his lips I realized he wasn’t shouting to anyone but was giving vent to his long-pent-up feelings. He had got the head moving and was unscrewing it. As he took it off, we all joined in his excitement. Everyone grabbed for the telescope so as to be able to see for themselves. ... The Korean girl who had been knocked down by the blast snatched the telescope from me, with such a jog that it bumped my eyes.
Tsui Yi put the head down, and stuck his ear to the hole. Then he peered into it, took out his notebook to make an alteration, and put his hand down into the maw of the bomb, and moved it as though he was untying some intricate knot. He was still shouting excitedly, but this time I could hear him, in English again, “Give up guns, or be killed!” The three bodyguards had by then run up to help. Exhausted as he was, however, he could not relinquish his “knot” at this critical moment, but went on working away, until he succeeded in doing what he was afterdisconnecting the detonator, and disarming this U.S. warlord. By this time he was just about played out, even though he seemed to be made of iron, but he still kept at it, and to save the powder said reassurinely, still in Enelish, to his “disarmed prisoner’: “Well treat captives!”
The world seemed to wear a smiling face, and so did all of us. We were all cheering madly, Chinese and Koreans together. The Korean girl, whom I could now notice as a person in her pink coat and long green skirt, had burst out singing. “O’er the summit of the White-Headed Mountains a white stork wings its way,” she carolled. She couldn’t keep on the ground eyen, but was on tiptoe, dancing to her song. Then she flung her arms wide and flew across to Tsui Yi like a butterfly, followed by the shouting crowd. They seized Tsui Yi, and lifted him triumphantly into the air.
Commandant Shen did not move, so little Feng and I stayed by him. He stood as in a trance.
“What are you dreaming?’ I asked him.
As though carried away by his intense joy, he answered proudly, “Tt’s no dream that I’m haying. No dream! It’s all real!”
. Later on, Comrade Tsui Yi came to our unit, to organize a training class. Except for his trips to the field hospital for dressings, he lectured all day on “How to Dismantle Delayed Action Bombs’—and how to save the explosive for use in the reconstruction of Korea. ... He very quickly trained a group of comrades to dismantle the bombs, so that we no longer had to remove them bodily.
He was cited as a Special Grade Meritorious Fighter of the Chinese People’s Volunteers. At one of the meetings held by the Chinese People’s Delegation to Korea to present citations and merits to those who had
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