v01: A Kite in the Barracks (Huzi: The True Story of a Boy Artist Growing Up in the Communist Army)

The Kindle Huzi Collection provides selections from the book Huzi: The True Story of a Boy Artist Growing Up in the Communist Army, about Cao Zhenfeng (1926-2006), nicknamed Huzi. Here the reader will find a certain Chinese point-of-view on some events of the twentieth century that changed the world. Huzi was born into poverty, when warlords were fighting civil wars, Japanese bombing civilians, and militias loyal to Chang Kai-shek conducting summary executions of suspected communists. At twelve, he joined the communist Eighth Route Army, “to fight the Japanese and save China.” He could draw, and read and write, which was rare in those days, and so he served as a pictorial-journalist at the front lines of three wars: the Anti-Japanese War, China’s Civil War, and the Korean War. He had many adventures, and some narrow escapes. His illustrated reports were widely distributed to educate and encourage the troops, local folks, and peasants, most of whom were illiterate. Finally, when Huzi was twenty-seven, 1953, he “retired” from the combat army. The book ends there – he went on to become an authority on Chinese folk art, and a Deputy Director of China’s National Art Museum. This Kindle volume tells of his early years, when warlords were fighting one another in a tangled chaos of civil wars.