The 19th Route Army waits in Shanghai.
Impatiently, with every passing day since the Japanese ultimatum. While the Route Armies operate under Nationalist jurisdiction, their sense of concord with the leadership couldn’t be farther away. The top of the command ladder wants the country to compromise. Appease. Allow for conciliation. Wouldn’t we prefer to achieve internal pacification before we go forward with external resistance? The 19th Route Army already fought viciously in Jiangxi before being moved up here. There, it was against the Communists. Civil strife, clambering to control the core while their border is bitten to nubs. The soldiers aren’t any less angry now that they’re in a new environment. They froth for blood, sick to death of letting imperialists run rampant on the streets.
“Bunch of devils in the suits of men,” the soldier with the ripped shoes says. He’s trying to stitch up a hole in the armpit of his shirt, because they haven’t gotten new uniforms in eons, and besides, there are more important matters.
“Who?” the other soldier asks. This one brought his own shoes as spares. The two men came from the same place, a Cantonese unit, but they are as diPerent as night and day.
“The Japanese. Who else?” the 1rst soldier says. “It’s already starting, and they’re not letting us 1ght yet.”
Who else? Funny. There are actually quite a lot else.
The Chinese parts of the city are breaking. Zhabei teeters at the tipping point of invasion, its people demanding an exit of Japanese forces, and the empire pressing harder to retaliate. If the soldiers of the 19th Route Army are to be let loose, there needs to be declared conAict. The leadership formally created the 5th Army for Shanghai some few days ago. The 19th Route Army’s commanders
have shifted around to accommodate it. Each and every one of them can smell war on the precipice, but the declaration has not come. They wait. They itch.
“No military action yet on either side,” his friend says. He’s echoing what has been passed along the ranks. An assurance, of sorts, as if it is meant to be a good thing.
There might not be military action yet, but conAict started a while back. It started with the city’s distaste for the invasion up in Manchuria, an empire trying to claim control over land that didn’t belong to it. It started with the volunteer forces forming among the Japanese—the ronin—taking it upon themselves to act as a police force in the Japanese-governed areas of Shanghai.
The soldier 1nishes stitching his shirt. It’ll break again. Just as it has already broken the last few times. Maybe his tighter knot will hold for longer this time, though.
“No military action,” he echoes plainly. “But plenty of the ronin going around. Beating. Raping. Executing. No one’s going to help the civilians at their mercy when any action is counted as a maneuver of conAict.”
A strange rumble sounds in the distance. The soldiers who have been resting perk to attention, wary over the interruption. They are still somewhat in the peripheries of the city. Removed from the areas they speak of, the fear that has shrouded the people unfortunate enough to be located in a pending war zone.
It has to stop. No matter the cost, no force can be allowed to run amok in such a manner. In Zhabei itself, the volunteer corps stir to life, gathering numbers to prepare for what is to come. In the foreign concessions, when the Westerners aren’t looking, the remains of gangster rule pass weapons and money, recruit snipers from every corner of the city to be ready.
I’m ready, the city whispers. I can bleed. I’ll drown you with every wound.
“Must be a truck,” the soldier says, shrugging his shirt back on. “Back to base, then.”
They walk. The skies come down with a light smattering of rain, erasing their footsteps in the soil, shifting the twigs into place again with every rivulet. The roads wash over, all the mud of the tire tracks spilling to the edges, the gravel undisturbed.
They wait.
