Ashes of the Dragon: A Protect and Survive Tale

ITTL 2016, what's the standard of life in the better parts of China vs the worst off north and interior?

Out on the coast, especially in Guangdong, Fujian, and southern Zhejiang Provinces the odds are good that, depending on the city, you'll have either electricity or running water. If you're very lucky, you'll have both. The Confederation of the Pearl, a loose trade and defense alliance between Hong Kong, Macau, and surviving cities in north-eastern Guangdong Province, and the Republic of China-Taiwan/Fujian are the two most "modern" survivor states. The CoP and ROC-T/F have access to pre-war weapons, some surviving pre-war tech, and are opening up trade with each other and surviving states in Southeast Asia. In the interior most of the provinces have imploded and government is run out of the county and town levels. The ROC-T/F is re-constituting the Fujian provincial government, the CoP is re-constituting the Guangdong provincial government, and both are working to re-constitute Zhejiang.

The problem for both is that the further inland you get in central China, the worse things get. The Yellow and Yangtze River dams, dikes, and flood abatements were burst by Soviet ICBMs in '84, so most of the useful farmland was inundated by flood waters just before the spring planting. That, combined with the heavy strikes in and around Shanghai and Nanjing left a lot of residual radiation. That made farming difficult. Most of the provincial capitals were hit with three exceptions, which meant that central government dissolved. It's like the country has returned to the worst excesses of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period in the 11th Century, only there are more kingdoms and dynasties, and more people dying for them. Once you hit Hebei, Beijing, Shandong, and Liaoning, life gets harder by the kilometer. The population of Manchuria was essentially bombed out of existence by the USSR in the tactical exchange. There might be around four or five million people left in all of Manchuria, but that might be over-estimating the surviving population.

In the central provinces and the north outside of Manchuria most of the villages have returned to a pre-industrial standard. Most farms are run by animal power, if they can farm and if the radiation in the soil and groundwater is low enough. Life expectancy is around 40-45 years old in the central and northern provinces, a little higher on the coast but only by a few years.
 
How many warheads have successfully detonated on Chinese soil? Also, which of the provincial capitals escaped destruction?

With so many governments being run at the local level, yet with most people still identifying as "Chinese," it'd certainly make for some amusing nomenclature. I'd imagine lots of insignificant warlords would heap all sorts of ridiculous titles on themselves and their puny polities. Stuff like "Heavenly Regent of the Authentic Celestial Kingdom" being the strongman of a town of 2,000 souls occupying a...mountain temple somewhere in Sichuan. The Chinese language provides many opportunities for such embellishment.
 
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How many warheads have successfully detonated on Chinese soil? Also, which of the provincial capitals escaped destruction?

With so many governments being run at the local level, yet with most people still identifying as "Chinese," it'd certainly make for some amusing nomenclature. I'd imagine lots of insignificant warlords would heap also sorts of ridiculous titles on themselves and their puny polities.

I figured that it would be less than the US, USSR, UK, or FRG/DDR, but probably more than Italy. I figured maybe 40-60 strategic bombs hitting the major cities and provincial capitals, similar numbers for the major military bases, and maybe between 3 and 5 to burst the Yellow and Yangtze River dams, dikes, and flood abatements. The saving grace for China is that the USSR will be too busy with NATO to be able to target more nukes at China.

The provincial capitals I was going to have survive are:

-Guiyang, Guizhou
-Xining, Qinghai
-Lanzhou, Gansu
-Urumqi, Xinjiang
-Lhasa, Tibet
-Yinchuan, Ningxia
-Xi'an, Shaanxi

All of them, with the exception of Xi'an, are western cities with small population bases, large ethnic minorities, and very little in the way of industry. Xi'an I want to survive because of a stroke of luck in the weapons launch like Hong Kong and Macau. I could be persuaded to have Lanzhou get plastered because of the Jiuquan Launch Complex in the Gobi Desert. I have a soft spot for Xi'an after I visited (even though its a polluted, industrial hell-scape :p), and Lanzhou because of Lanzhou Beef Noodles.

As for the warlords, the titles are going to be a great throwback to the days of the old dynasties when they declare themselves "Hereditary Ruler of Heaven and Earth, Imperial Commander of all of China, etcetera." That's the one thing that Mao and the CCP did was to instill a very deep sense of national unity that I don't think even a thermonuclear war could eradicate. They might not be politically unified, but among the surviving populations they'll still declare themselves Chinese first, and their province second.
 
Hey Everyone,

Chapter one posted below. Enjoy!!

© Paul Goodfellow and After the Scifi Apocalypse, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from the author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Paul Goodfellow and After the Scifi Apocalypse with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Chapter 1: In the Land of the Living


First Provincial Hospital

Central District

Xi’an, North Chinese People’s Directorate

April 1, 2014

We entered the famous northern city of Xi’an, the historical home of half a dozen Chinese dynasties and kingdoms, expecting a bleak and depressing place befitting its recent title: Capital of the Xi’an Directorate. In the ten years since the death of Director Su Hongshan, Xi’an and the Northern Directorate have emerged from their recent history into what appears to be a better future. The streets are filled with animal-drawn carts, horses, pedestrians, and even the occasional car and tractor, though they are usually steam-powered. The city has a cobbled-together atmosphere befitting its multi-ethnic population. Since 2004 Xi’an has been a magnet for immigrants leaving the Central Chinese ruins, and as the largest city north of Guangdong Province it has attracted visitors and immigrants from as far afield as Kashgar and Urumqi.

At the same time, it also looks worn out. The city has been constantly inhabited for over three millennia. The farmland in the region is slowly dying under the weight of demand from tens of thousands of new residents. The Xi’an Drum Tower and the old imperial structures have been requisitioned and made into government offices, meaning that the old tourist attractions are now off-limits to all but official visitors. The old and new freely mingle in this city which has seen the comings and goings of conquerors and pacifists, of armies of soldiers and armies of citizens, of eras of war and eras of peace. In no other surviving city in China is the country’s history preserved in so complete a fashion as in the worn out, dilapidated, yet lively city of Xi’an.

2014 was the first year since 1984 that one could travel by train from Hong Kong inland to Shanxi Province and beyond to the still connected western provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Xinjiang, and northern Tibet. The Northern Directorate, along with the Republic of China-Taiwan/Fujian and the Confederation of the Pearl River, came together to jointly fund and construct the new rail line in hopes that easing travel burdens between South and North China would help foster ties between the survivor states. It was hoped that by linking all three together by rail, future generations would be encouraged to come together in a spirit of collaboration to help rebuild what was shattered thirty years ago.

Although the real reason, as most academics would argue it, was pure economics: Xi’an had no trade outlets to the outside world. While the RoC-F/T and the cities of the Pearl River have maintained maritime trade with the Vietnamese Federation, the northern and southern Thai states, and the long-standing military junta in Burma, the Northern Directorate and its ally, the Datong Collective, have had no trade connections with any region other than Western China since 1984. With the new rail ties, it is hoped that the factories of the Northern Directorate can find outlets in the markets of Guangdong, Taiwan, and beyond.

We came to Xi’an to interview some of the survivors of the 1984 war and the decades of madness under Director Su, specifically one man whose name we cannot give. His latest, and seemingly last, place of residence was the oncological ward of the First Provincial Hospital. Like most survivors of 1984, he was stricken with some form of highly aggressive cancer that was slowly eating him from the inside out. He had the misfortune of developing an aggressive, fast spreading form of leukemia that would leave him dead within a few months.

He had been a former PLA junior officer at the outbreak of the war stationed outside Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. He survived the four days of conventional combat in the Sino-Soviet War, the February 23rd nuclear exchange, and the months of combat that followed. In that regard, our interviewee was one of the ‘lucky’ ones who made it through a year where the PLA’s casualty percentage is high enough that one shudders to even attempt to tabulate it. He was one of the last surviving commissioned PLA officers that managed to make it out of Inner Mongolia in 1984 with a detachment under his command. And in the years that followed, he became the leader of a now infamous militia brigade that enforced security along one of the surviving rail lines in western Gansu Province under the orders of Director Su. His tactics and use of military force to protect the line have earned him the title, ‘Railway Butcher of Gansu.’

On our way to interview him at the First Provincial Hospital, we were witness to one of the new youth brigades that have formed in the North Chinese People’s Directorate. A group of high school students, no older than 18, marched by us waving red and yellow banners singing a re-written version of an old Communist song, “Without the Communist Party, there is no New China.” The lyrics were unimportant, as it has likely been rewritten a dozen times in the two years since we visited, but what was remarkable was that the old spirit was coming back. The youngest generation was starting to find its confidence again. Our parents and grandparents that survived the war, even in Hong Kong and Taiwan, were cowed into fear by the bombs, famine, pestilence, and death. Although Xi’an was still recovering, it seemed that the new generation of farmers and workers in Shaanxi province was more confident than those that birthed them.

When we entered the hospital room, our interviewee appeared to be asleep. His skin had taken on an ashen hue. His eyes had sunken into what looked like deep pits where his eye sockets once resided. For all intents and purposes, he appeared to be in the last days of his life. Unfortunately for him, like most survivors who were exposed to the extremely dirty weapons that the Chinese government had available to them in 1984, his cancer was terminal, aggressive, and unresponsive to treatment. He awoke slowly, a dry cough announcing his return from the unconscious mind. He gave us a weak smile and drank a small glass of tepid water that was resting on his bedside table. Eventually we got to the questions. When we asked him what name to use in the text, he said to call him,

“Corporal Lei Feng, because I’m still an old communist at heart!” He exclaimed. A series of dry coughs followed as he recovered from the exuberant outburst.

When we asked him what it was that struck him most about the lead up to the crisis, it was the routineness of the whole thing.

“It all felt like old ground,” said ‘Corporal Lei.’

“Every other time that the Yanks and the Soviets had crises flare up, it was always the same. After a few weeks, the crisis would abate and go back to normal.”

“After a few weeks, it all seemed to change. The tensions never really lessened after they started up in October. It started to feel less like routine and more like the real thing. Around the first week of November, I was redeployed from my operating base in Nanjing to a post in Inner Mongolia to babysit a rail switch outside Baotou. There was maybe a battalion of us that got shipped north. I complained at the time about getting sent to a backwater post where I would never get considered for promotion or advancement. In retrospect, I know that my redeployment saved mine and my comrade’s lives. If I had not been redeployed, I very well would have been vaporized along with the rest of Nanjing,” he said, emphasizing the point with another string of ragged coughs.

“I heard long after the fact, just after I got back from Gansu Province, that in early November 1983 Deng and his subordinates held some high level planning session and decided then to go into Siberia if the Soviets ended up in a war in Central Europe. There was some grandiose idea to retake Vladivostok and the lands lost under the terms of the Ussuri River Treaty. The other offensives that we all heard about, the ones to drive the Red Army out of Afghanistan and the southward push towards the Soviet military base at Haiphong, they were all secondary. The push into Siberia and the holding action at the Mongolian border were always supposed to be the main theaters of war,” said ‘Corporal Lei.’

“I had heard some rumors like that in late 1983 that we were going to war, but I discounted them as anti-party propaganda spread by capitalist-roaders who wanted to undermine Comrade Deng and his reforms. It wasn’t until very late December that they had some weight to them. That was when most of the border troops began receiving large amounts of ammunition from the storage depots, and that was when my detachment was reinforced to divisional strength. Fresh troops and reservists from the central provinces poured into Inner Mongolia. A buddy of mine who was stationed in the northeast wrote me a lengthy letter in early January. He talked about dozens of divisions getting shipped into Heilongjiang Province near where he was stationed. I don’t know how that letter got past the military censors. By then, it was written on the walls: We were going to war with our Socialist big brothers, the Soviet Union, and the Warsaw Pact,” he said with a pained grimace. He shook his head and looked down at his knobby, weathered hands.

“I always believed that we would find compromise with the Russians. They were fellow socialists, our older red brothers. Sure they had gone down the path of revisionism, but they could be brought back into the fold if they had their own Deng Xiaoping to show them the way. I never believed it would come to war,” he said.

‘Corporal Lei’ hesitated for a moment and lifted his head to stare out the window which looked out onto the street. It was filled with foot and bicycle traffic. The air had a brown haze from the ubiquitous coal fireplaces and ovens, and dust kicked up from the farmlands of Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Inner Mongolia. He let out a string of pained coughs, his wasted frame shook as he coughed hard twice and ceased; blood had spattered on his hands in a shower of small drops. He roughly wiped them on the hospital white sheets.

“I honestly feel sorry for those of you who have had to grow up in this post-atomic world. You never got to see the world before the bombs fell. There was such promise. Not a week has gone by since then that I have not at some point broken down and wept for what I lost that day, and what we all lost. I lost my fiancée, my parents, my hometown. I lost everything.”

“I know it doesn’t mean much coming from me. What I have made of my life since that evening is not worthy of sympathy. The blood on my hands is too much to wash off. Too many people have died on my orders, or by my actions. But I was a decent man before it all fell apart. I was a good man,” he said and trailed off again. He seemed to be convincing himself of the truth of that statement as much as he wanted to convince us of that.

In all honesty, I did feel some sympathy for him. Both of us who were there that day to interview the illustrious ‘Corporal’ understood in some small way that he was as much a victim of circumstances as anyone. No one had made it out of the 1984 war unscarred, or unchanged. My father had been forced in circumstances beyond his control to carry out actions that deeply changed him. All of us had family and friends who lived through those chaotic and bloody years who were forced to make painful choices between killing and dying.

“I know that how we act in crisis says a lot about who we are as people. How I responded was perhaps a reflection of how our country responded to the war. We turned on each other, one by one, and in the ashes of our cities and our farms we ate each other alive. The ruins of the country and of the cities that were destroyed by our infighting are a testament to the depths to which we sank after our civilization died around us.”

“I hope that the history books will not even remember my name. It is better if my bones end up in some family graveyard, long forgotten, and left untended. I was never a religious man, and my grandmother always chastised my lack of reverence for the family ancestors. I hope that, if she was right and I have to come back again to atone for my actions in this life that I will be allowed to remember enough to not make the same mistakes again. I cannot erase what I did, but I do genuinely hope that in the next life, all of us can somehow or another make up for what we did to one another in those months and years after the end of the world.”
 
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Any other thoughts on the writing or the pacing? Is it too slow of an open? Do we want more details?

I'm liking it, nice documentary style. The moment of grief at all that was lost in the Exchange was quite well done; good sense of pathos without crossing the line into wallowing in it. Top-notch stuff!

Just a little aside, but have you any plans for India? I've contributed my own take on the canon, FWIW, but if you care to embellish your own way then I'm happy to try and make our interpretations align :)
 
I think you invited some stuff from other people familiar with the place and time. When you said "Hong Kong" I thought DING DING DING I shall say something then. I'm (pausing to think, this is no joke) 44 now (yeah, 44) so this goes back to my childhood...

When I was ten years old, circa 1982-1983, we (Ma Pa and younger brother) lived in Hong Kong for about a year and a half. If I recall correctly, starting maybe for just under half a year (1981?), it was Luk Kwok Hotel followed by Goshen Mansions --a tiny one-bedroom apartment, I slept in the living room. It was a 24 hour flight to get there, at least, big blue fabric seats on the Pan Am 747, I don't remember if we were on an SP 747 but I do remember Dad pointing an SP out and noting that it was specially made for flight around the world.

Shortly after that we came back for the year/year-ish and it was Tai Heng Drive, 15 Tai Heng Drive iirc, then "chat sap chat" Robinson Road, 77 Robinson Road, on the peak! Rephrase: The Peak. Dad had a I think 1976 or 1974 Benz 350SE, beige metallic, beige interior, austere and not "luxury" as far as I could tell even though the car was the first one I remember of ours having power windows. (Ma Pa briefly had an Olds 98 convertible, sky blue on white iirc the description, before I was born, it had luxury features including I presume power windows but the tranny had issues and that was that.)

My impressions...

It was muggy and hot, and, the diesel taxis, red things with silver roofs, Crowns and iirc Laurels (Cedrics?) on the thin high-sidewalled tires, with meat-locker air conditioning, HK always had that fantastic clash of muggy hot outside and then flash-freeze when you got inside, especially a restaurant, the power bill must have been epic. I freaking loved it. Even if it took me what felt to be a considerable chunk of time to learn chopsticks --restaurants did not provide knife and fork, you dig?-- the food was fantastic.

Double-decker everything, double-decker buses, double-decker trams hum-click hum hum click (trolleys? but I think they were called trams), double-decker ferries freaking all the time, the Star Ferry was just a gorgeous big boat symmetrical in design and it chugged back and forth all the time nonstop, you put in I think a twenty-cent coin, with the squiggly circumference, into the turnstile and away you went. It was a very entertaining five to ten minute ride according to my ten-year-old recollection. Mom and Dad were young! They weren't even forty.

The Star Ferry went from Hong Kong Island --the lovely small incredibly detail-rich chunk of jungle and rock featuring Victoria Peak, which was not to be taken lightly in terms of ascending as it would require the diesel taxis to shift down to first gear as they got to work going up (near the peak for first gear? near-ish?) and tour-buses (nearer/near the peak) would grind up at walking pace-- to Kowloon. Kowloon was mainland, Kowloon and Hong Kong Island were Hong Kong, that British enclave/colony, with the New Territories buffering HK from PRC.

At the time '82-'83, The New Territories was emphatically less developed than HK/HK "proper," and I remember rice paddies near the New Territories/PRC border. That changed incredibly quickly.

British accents! To this day I have a very very hard time asking a question (or setting out to ask for something) without breaking into a British-like inflection. We went to a British school, we had uniforms, everyone except for the kids who went to the American school had uniforms, there was assembly where you sat cross-legged on the gymnasium floor and "Good Morning Mister Brown, Good Morning Every One!" and you did not deviate from sitting cross-legged or that Scottish bitch enforcer would scour your hide. Not literally, the only corporal punishment that I ever heard of was my own little brother getting spanked for misbehaving in his first grade class, though he hadn't really misbehaved and recollection of is telling was that he was not upset but he was indignant that they did this. (Our parents were not shy about spanking fwiw.)

From 82/83 to later visits, like 1990 or so, changes were significant. It seemed people got a LOT taller. By 1990, there was a lot less a LOT less hock-too-ing going on, the hock-too-ing --I'm talking HHOCK-TOO!! spitting into the street, onto the sidewalk and it seemed almost nearly constant circa 1982/1983. Most of the time the Chinese were friendly iirc. They often reached down to touch (tousle) my brother's red hair and my brother HATED that.

Soon my wife will awaken and start bellowing at me to get ready for work so cutting to the chase...

Nukes!

Of course the Cold War was the air we breathed.

When discussed at school, it was accepted that a single nuke would take Hong Kong Island completely out.

Hong Kong being not just British but the locale of at least two James Bond movies (a small part of You Only Live Twice, I think, and a big chunk of The Man With The Golden Gun) definitely warranted a nuke. From Russia. (The Chinese would be getting HK in 1997.)

Wife is awake.

I wanted so to share some "color," HK was a beautiful crowded hot mess of a place, lots of walking up and down, at the time there was still a good amount of British cars and trucks in the traffic, Leyland trucks, especially Leyland medium-ish trucks with a guy sitting in the back rhythmically sounding out the back-up/reverse warning with a metal rod linked with a chain (or string?) to the rear pole of the back for that purpose, none of that fancy beep-beep stuff for a lot of those vehicles. Rule Brittannia! Seriously, if English spoken then English with British accent, lots of Scottish if I can be relied on. Okay, my own teacher, Ms. Walker, she was sweet, really great, young woman, short blonde hair, good laugh great sense of humor lots of affection for the kids, she drove a FIAT X19 man dig it she was very cool. Mister Brown, the Headmahster, walked around with dark sunglasses, white short-sleeve button-down shirt, white short pants with a black belt, no pith helmet though more's the pity haw haw, he seemed fine, not the cruel type iirc. Mrs Speddings was a freaking 18th-century monstrosity, she was MEAN, she was the math teacher, and if the big slow-witted Yank thought he could actually ASK the TEACHER to move so that he could see the board to take notes well that was just unacceptable. (She called my mother about this to fume about such unprecedented woof arf etc.)

The subway at that point was iirc brand spanking new at least it seemed that way with polished stainless steel benches on the sides and plenty of space for crowding between them. During non-rushhour which was usually when we used the thing we would actually slide on the stainless steel seating, it was freaking cool, awesome, enjoyable great place. Kai Tak Airport. Flying over the smallish crowded apartment buildings before slam-dunk landing onto the runway. Great for a kid like me who adored cars and eating and weird stuff. Not weird but you understand.
 
Any other thoughts on the writing or the pacing? Is it too slow of an open? Do we want more details?

I've read only the first chunk of narration but you obviously know what you are doing.

Do your magic, tell the story, have confidence that your pacing and detail are perfect because you are the narrator and it is your narrative.
 
As I mention in the PM, it's going to be hard for the PLA to move millions of draftees to the front, much less equip them. The Soviets have superior firepower, mobility, some degree of air superiority, and endurance in the late winter months that will be making Heilongjiang a frozen hell in this battle. It wouldn't be easy, but the Russians would probably be able to do circles around the slow-moving Chinese formations and blitz their way to Harbin and other cities.

I'm thinking the American nuclear arsenal eviscerated Soviet command and control once The Balloon Dropped. I wonder how long meaningful Soviet military activity could be kept up once everything went foomp. Remember Macragge's fantastic epic lovely work, with [Spoiler alert. I'm kind of color blind, so, the text might be visible regardless] the CCCP submarine showing up on British beach with the surviving crew practically zombies shambling out.
 
I just found this, and I'd have to say that this is absolutely brilliant. Would be happy to help with Hong Kong.
 
In collaboration with General_Paul on this project, here's the start of the narrative regarding the creation and development of the Great Collective in Datong, Shanxi.


The Great Collective

Part 1: The Path
of a thousand years

1984.

February 24, north beyond Yan’men Pass, Shanxi Province.

Colonel Yang did not react to the Day of Ruin, as it would later become known in the literature, with the same despondency as the younger, less hardened men under his command. His skin dark from years in the fields, the gaunt but solid 38-year-old took a moment to contemplate what would become of the remains of his parents, who had starved to death in the Great Leap Forward, and of his ex-wife, with whom he’d had a divorce seven years ago—the end of the Cultural Revolution meant the restoration of functioning bureaucracy that made the separation possible.

He hoped she would make it through, somehow, or if not, at least have the honor of a permanent, underground resting place. It was a thought made abstract and by its concise, structured articulation in Yang’s minimalist, disciplined mind. What would have been an unbearable piece of psychological baggage for one was to him like a classical poem: brief and formulaic—but still significant—and written on a slip of paper just as readily lost in the wind and fire as to be ever read by another pair of human eyes.

Yang’s command of 5,000 motorized infantry, on their way to reinforce the tattered and beaten Liberation Army formations preparing for a last stand between Datong City and the Soviet invaders, were in luck. Half a day after they had detrained and left the staging ground in Taiyuan, provincial capital of Shanxi, a one-megaton warhead came flying from somewhere near the Soviet-Mongol border and detonated three hundred meters above the city, killing six hundred thousand people instantly and leaving another three hundred thousand to die in the coming days.

It was not a simple trip to Datong. After the night of the 22nd, seeing the horrible flash and sunset-colored mushroom cloud over the remains of Taiyuan just behind them, nobody in the regiment even knew for a fact if their destination still existed. In the following day, refugees fleeing the immolated provincial seat clogged the roads and railways made progress even more difficult. To protect itself from atomic bombardment, the regiment left the paved roads and railway to continue their journey through the countryside.

So Colonel Yang, regarding the great clouds billowing over Taiyuan, buried what little concerns for the past he held in his heart, set his gaze to that city named for the utopian Great Collective of Confucian idealism—Datong.


-----

Northern outskirts of Datong, February 23.

Major Li Ang was too busy drawing plans and giving orders to the surviving men and officers manning the anti-tank defenses positioned around the heights north of Datong to pay much heed to the demise of the civilized world. He was angry, not with the leaders who were scurrying away to hidden redoubts in Sichuan or those who stayed in their posts and were burned where they stood, no, he was not even furious at the Russians who, like the Japanese before them, were proceeding in a brutal rampage of fire and poison gas straight towards the Central Plain.

Li was angry at his own men: meek good-for-nothings who had been trained more to march in straight lines and hoe fields, not shoot enemies with small arms, much less use the antiquated anti-tank guns that had weren’t even assigned to them originally—Li’s troops were the third or fourth group of men sent to hold to the heights to re-man the weapons at the cost of their lives. Entire companies had been wiped out, without firing a single shot, by Soviet tanks or those fearsome armored helicopters that Li had first learned of the last year in a briefing about the conflict in Afghanistan.

Despite two dozen atomic bombs of China’s own delivered to the Mongolian battlefield by bombers or exploded by mines laid carefully along the Russian axes of attack, Datong was still threatened by two full divisions of Soviet armor and mechanized rifles. They had already bombarded the city’s built-up outskirts, where the defenders made their headquarters, with rains of mortar bombs, and stood poised to strike right into the city.

But it wasn’t just the abject gap in quality that caused the horrible losses among the men belonging to the three divisions holding Datong. Li Ang was annoyed and dissatisfied with his conscripts, but at least they did what they were told, after a fashion. The officers just a rung or two beneath him were a different story entirely. Self-righteous ideologues who understood the subtle changes to the wind caused by Chairman Mao’s farts better than maps or tactics, that was what they were, and before the war, nobody had bothered to tell them that it was the latter, not the former, that they would need to stay alive. With cries of “wei le dang he renmin!”—for Party and People (1)— they herded their hapless grunts into the meat grinder.

That night, there was some cause for relief: when news came that General Wang, commander of the 12,000 men still alive and in fighting condition, had succumbed to a shrapnel wound sustained in the latest barrage by Russian mortars, everyone, including Li Ang’s political officer, Major Guo, seemed ready to lay off the politics.

In light of the general’s death in battle, and of the nuclear exchange that had, as far as anyone could tell, had destroyed the central government, it was quickly agreed that the surviving battalion and regiment leaders would lead a provisional military council responsible for the defense of the city until Party control could be restored.

And two hours after sunset, more news came: a fresh motorized regiment, led by one Colonel Yang and equipped with new weapons, modern training, and ample supplies, had escaped nuclear attack and was on its way to Datong.

Notes

(1) 为了党和人民!
 
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I just found this, and I'd have to say that this is absolutely brilliant. Would be happy to help with Hong Kong.

Absolutely! I'm only planning on maybe one or two running perspectives in Hong Kong for the overall narrative, so I'm happy to have other writers. Quite honestly, HK and Macau are deserving of stand alone stories of their own. For the time being, I'm doing the overall China narrative, but I'd love to see someone take on HK, Macau, and maybe Taiwan for stand alone narratives of their own in the future.
 
I'm liking it, nice documentary style. The moment of grief at all that was lost in the Exchange was quite well done; good sense of pathos without crossing the line into wallowing in it. Top-notch stuff!

Just a little aside, but have you any plans for India? I've contributed my own take on the canon, FWIW, but if you care to embellish your own way then I'm happy to try and make our interpretations align :)

We're not planning on dealing with India in our narrative, besides maybe an aside mention of one of the Long March missiles getting thrown at Delhi or Islamabad. I'd love to read something on India now that you're getting near the end of your New Zealand narrative! We need some South Asian post-apocalyptia on the site!
 
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