Template:Featured article/January 2014

The Manchurian Affair

At dawn on a chilly March morning in 1933, the China Navigation Company’s 2,480-ton coaster Nanchang rode at anchor in the estuary of the Liao River, awaiting a pilot to take her the nineteen miles upriver to Newchwang, the old beancaking port on the Gulf of Liao-Tung in northeastern Manchuria.

Just a year and half before, the Japanese Army had invaded the province, establishing the “independent” state of Manchukuo under the puppet leadership of the deposed playboy Emperor, Henry Pu-Yi. The Nationalist forces had fled, leaving a few stragglers to scratch a living from the bleak landscape as outlaws. The once thriving foreign community had dwindled to a handful and the trappings of European life on the China coast - the tennis club and the golf course - had fallen into disrepair. Click here for more...