Ashes of the Dragon: A Protect and Survive Tale

[Tsar of New Zealand]

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!

Well, I doubt China would nuke Pakistan - they were major allies by this point IOTL - but my notes on India have New Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Pune, Lucknow, Kanpur, Ludhiana, and Bhopal being the only ones conclusively identified as hit. South India gets off completely scot-free (Madras is probably going to end up the largest city), but Agra also survives. I've also mentioned that the missiles were tracked inbound from the north, so the Chinese are the prime suspects. Make of all that what you will.

It's the Soviets who knacker Pakistan; Peshawar, Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, and Quetta are hit, with tactical strikes by whatever sub-critical weapons are available to both India and Pakistan being used on one another in the week-long war between them adding Kahuta and Ferozepore to the butcher's bill.

Long and the short of all that is, you could easily make a throwaway reference to a Long March missile being launched at the decadent capitalists on the Ganges. Keep up the good work!

 

[LeX]

Showing Soviet tactical (smaller, orange dots) and strategic (larger, red dots) nuclear explosions in Manchuria between February 22 and 23 1984. Of a population of well over 100 million, an estimated 10 to 15 million locals survived the exchange. The two largest surviving cities are Fuxin, Liaoning Province, and Liaoyuan, Jilin Province, with about half a million people each. Other relatively unscathed areas are the southern mountains of Jilin and the northern reaches of Heilongjiang.

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

Showing Soviet tactical (smaller, orange dots) and strategic (larger, red dots) nuclear explosions in Manchuria between February 22 and 23 1984. Of a population of well over 100 million, an estimated 10 to 15 million locals survived the exchange. The two largest surviving cities are Fuxin, Liaoning Province, and Liaoyuan, Jilin Province, with about half a million people each. Other relatively unscathed areas are the southern mountains of Jilin and the northern reaches of Heilongjiang.

Sweet home Alabama, and I thought Germany got trashed! I await the Mad Max-ery of Manchuria.

 

[XFE]

Bumpity Bump

 

[The Red]

When people are no longer afraid of death, there is no use threatening them with it

Outstanding.

 

[General_Paul]

Hey Everyone!

I know it's been two months, but thanks to some inspiration (and a refurbished IBM Selectric typewriter I just purchased!) I have gotten back to work on Ashes of the Dragon. I have another two chapters finished as well, but I need to start editing and transcribing them as well. I hope everyone enjoys returning back to the post-apocalyptic hellscape that is China after the nuclear war. As always, comments, criticisms, and creative suggestions are always welcomed. 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 2: Red Army Royalty

Xi’an, North Chinese People’s Directorate

April 1, 2014

It is a rare occurrence in the writing of a book like this that a family member would come to us without prompting to tell the story of one of their parents or a close relative. Our second interview subject in the North Chinese People’s Directorate had been dead for years by the time we heard his story.

After we were finished interviewing ‘Corporal Lei Feng’ on our first day in the city of Xi’an, we were approached by a nurse who worked in the hospital. She was very odd in appearance by local standards: Her piercing blue eyes betrayed a mixed heritage which was rare by local standards. She spoke in a hushed voice and asked us if we were there to collect the stories of survivors. When we said yes, she invited us to come to her apartment for dinner. When I asked why, she told me and my partner that she wanted to introduce us to her father, someone who would have been considered an ‘undesirable’ in the old days of the Directorate before its reform. When we pressed her further, she only told us that he could give us a story that the people of Hong Kong would want to hear.

Our curiosity was piques, and we agreed to hear her father’s story. That evening, we made our way to a set of new apartment buildings just off the Second Ring Road, outside of Xi’an’s burgeoning downtown section. In the distance, we could hear the faint high pitched honking of the limited number of locally produced automobiles that either ran on the highly rationed gasoline that was only given to government officials, or the more easily obtained natural gas. Our cab out to her apartment was jerry rigged to run on coal, something that neither of us want to repeat riding in again. Her building was one of the newly built, vaguely Soviet looking constructions that were ubiquitous in Beijing and many cities throughout the old People’s Republic before the exchange. The seven story, squat construct was built of concrete and brick. Although it obviously did not keep in the heat during Shaanxi’s notorious North Chinese winters, it looked comfortable enough compared to the open-air, one room huts that still littered the interior since time immemorial. Compared to a farmer in post-war Jiangsu, or a refugee in Guangzhou, the apartment building was heaven on earth.

We knocked on the solid metal door, which rang out down the cavernous hallway. We were reticent, not knowing what to expect. When the door opened, we saw the bright, beaming face of a girl who looked no older than twenty-five. She invited us in and formally introduced herself as “Ekaterina Wang-Petrov.” Neither I, nor my partner had heard a hyphenated name used anywhere outside of Hong Kong and certainly not in the socially conservative North Chinese People’s Directorate. She spoke passable English, but with a heavy Chinese accent. Although she was diminutive in public and painfully shy when she spoke to us at the hospital, in private she would have been the social heart of any party in Hong Kong. Like most who survived the harsh, repressive years of the Directorate, she was guarded in displaying her emotions around others, especially those who one suspected of being government agents. Most likely she was brought up in the Soviet-modeled Directorate school system that instilled in pupils from an early age the value of informing on family members or loved ones who might hold anti-government opinions. Thus, any initial suspicions she had of us made some sense.

We entered her home and sat down in a small living room. There was an overpowering scent of stew when we sat down. Ekaterina informed us that she had prepared a large pot of Ukrainian-style Borscht, complete with ham-hocks, bay leaves, and an assortment of beets and root vegetables. That was not all. As she gave us the tour of the apartment, which was small but cozy, she showed us her bathroom which came complete with shower, toilet, and a liquor still. She told us that her father had taught her how to make Russian style vodka before his passing, and she had found a broken still on the side of the road in the city. She found the former owner and got him to tell her what was broken. She explained with pride as she told us about the months she spent scrounging up enough parts to repair the still so that she could make her family’s liquor recipe. On a personal note, I would like to say that she produced a very good facsimile of what I imagine a pre-war Russian or Polish potato vodka must have tasted like.

The apartment did not seem large enough to house two people and there were no obvious signs of a male presence. When we asked her where her father was, she invited us to sit down and poured us both glasses of her homemade vodka.

“I did not think you would have come if I told you the truth. My father has been dead for the past six years, dead from stomach cancer,” Ekaterina said.

In all honesty, neither I nor my partner minded much. She had been friendly and hospitable to us and, honestly, was easy on the eyes. I had been eager enough to take up her offer when we were in the hospital and the truth of her father’s passing did not phase me much.

“My father was what you would have called in the old days, before the exchange, ‘Red Army Royalty.’ My grandfather was hero in the Great Patriotic War against the fascists. He received the Order of Lenin personally from Stalin. When my father was growing up, unlike many he told me about in Stalin’s Russia, they never went without. My father went to the best schools, they lived in the best apartments in Moscow. He never liked to tell me much about his life before the war, and after my mother’s passing fifteen years ago he became very reserved. It was not until he was on his death bed that he opened up to me about his life before the war,” she explained.

“I have something to show you, please wait here,” Ekaterina said to us.

She quickly shuffled out of the room and ran into her bedroom. Neither I, nor my partner, knew what she would bring back. We were more than a little worried that she was actually a government plant, and Public Security Bureau agents would come bursting into the room, arrest us, revoke our visas, and toss us onto the next train bound for Hong Kong.

We held our breaths until she came back carrying an armful of notebooks. They were old, and dingy looking. The journals were weathered with age, yellowed on the sides with brown-ish stains showing on many of the covers. The top two journals, in particular, stuck out as peculiar looking. They looked like old field manuals. She put them down in front of us on the table in two stacks. The one in front of me had the top two journals. The top journal was very old and worn. It was some kind of thick cardstock on the covers and had what appeared to be faded Cyrillic lettering embossed on the front.

We were both still somewhat confused.

“Why are you so worried about your father’s past? If he has been dead as long as you say, what is there left to be worried about?” I asked.

Ekaterina reached over and opened up the top journal, flipping the tattered old cover and pointing to the first entry. Surprisingly enough, it was written in perfect English public school long hand. At the top oif the page, scrawled in a hurried hand were the words, “Journal of Vasili Pronin, Missile Officer, 53rd Rocket Army, 47th Rocket Division, Olovyannaya, Chita Oblast, Soviet Union.” When we looked up from the journal, our host had fetched for us two bowels of the borscht, small cups of hot water, and had refilled our vodka glasses. She motioned for us to continue.

My partner and I both took a moment to breathe in the smell of authentic Russian borscht, enjoyed a few spoonful’s of the dish, and returned to reading the journal.

January 1, 1994

If you are reading this, than either I or my family have managed to escape from the living hell that is the Xi’an Directorate and the unconscionable rule of Director Su. Here in the city, I go by the Chinese name Ma Bufan, the name of an old Qinghai warlord during the Republican era. Thankfully most of the literate residents are dead or so terrified of asking strangers about their names that I have gone unnoticed. My real name is Vasili Pronin. I was a missile officer in the Soviet Strategic Missile Forces in 1984. I am all that remains of my detachment of troops that left Moscow in December of 1983 to man a UR-100 (Editor’s note: NATO reporting name SS-11) ICBM missile base in the Chita Military District on the border with the People’s Republic of China. In the ten years since the Third World War and the destruction of both China and the Soviet Union, I have managed to survive where most others have succumbed either to radiation, starvation, disease or madness.

I did not survive by luck alone. I survived because at the moment that we were given the order to launch our UR-100 missiles against our targets in southern China, I made a choice that has defined my life in the ten years that have followed. I chose to disobey direct orders from General Ogarkov himself and followed my conscience. In doing so, I spared the citizens of Hong Kong, Macao, and those who lived on the coast. My men did not know that I had re-directed our missiles to land in the ocean. I could not live with myself, even if it was only for thirty minutes, and go to my grave knowing that I had sent millions to their graves. Afterward, I fled the missile bunker, grabbed our GAZ-66, and drove into the forest. I watched twenty minutes later, knowing I had abandoned my men to face their deaths, as an American or Chinese warhead went off above the base. I drove for the Mongolian border, and when I ran out of petrol, I stole a horse from a barn and made my way towards what I hoped was salvation. I was and continue to be stained with cowardice, while my men along with the rest of the Soviet military in the Far East, had the discipline to stand in place and be vaporized like the good New Soviet Men they were supposed to be. The last ten years of suffering has been my penance for my morality.

As far as those who I consider to be ‘friends’ here in Xi’an are concerned, I was a farmer from western Heilongjiang Province who lost everything in the chaos of the nuclear exchange and the death that came after. I look close enough to a pure-breed second generation White Russian émigré and speak with a passable enough north Chinese accent that no one gives me a second glance. In this post-atomic nightmare that our leaders have plunged us into, truth and fiction have become interchangeable. No one is what they seem to be. Here, especially, in the Xi’an Directorate, where everyone is literally or figuratively a slave of the government and military, truth and fiction are erased entirely.

All that we have now are the fragments of our lives that survived the immolation of thermonuclear fire, and the figments of our imagination to keep our sanity. When I look at my three year old daughter and remember the world that she will inherit; the broken and shattered world, filled with ashes and corpses living and dead, buried and walking, a burnt offering to the heavens and to God himself, I cannot help but weep. Why I brought such innocence into this world drowning in seas of blood and pain, it seems a burden that she does not deserve to bear.

I put my truth down into this journal in hopes that someone, somewhere in some future world, maybe here in the Directorate, or somewhere else far away from this literal hell on earth will come to know my truth. My name and rank is Commander Vasili Iosef Pronin, son of General Mikhail Pronin. He was the hero of Stalingrad, twice awarded the order of Lenin, General of the Central Army Group 1955-1964, member of the Soviet General Staff from 1972 until February 1984 when the nuclear exchange occurred. I attended Lomonosov University (Editor’s Note: Known in the West before the Soviet Era as Moscow State University). I graduated top of my class in 1979 with a degree in Political Studies and entered the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces shortly thereafter. Compared to the men placed under my command before the war, many of which had grown up on communal farms in the Ukraine or Baltic States, I had a life of luxury and almost European opulence. We had a dacha on the Black Sea, a large and well decorated apartment in Moscow. We attended the yearly Red Army balls at the Kremlin. We were the public face of what a good Soviet military family should be.

From 1979 until 1983, I had the pleasure of serving at a number of overseas consulates and embassies because of my father’s connections. I spent the spring and summer of 1980 serving as Assistant Secretary at a KGB Field Station in Hong Kong. I spent my days conversing with the staff and with locals who came to our offices, who were all under the impression that we were a Russian import-export firm. But, I spent my nights enjoying the sights and sounds of what I still believe to be the most beautiful plot of land on this earth. During my long crossing through Mongolia, across the deserts of Inner Mongolia and into Shaanxi Province, I kept the memory of the sunrise over Victoria Park close. There were some days that those memories were all that kept me going.

When I received orders to launch my missiles at Hong Kong, Macao, and Guangdong, all I could think of were those reddish-orange sunrises over the glittering towers of British Hong Kong, the smells of steamed dumplings, and the broken chatter of English, Cantonese, and Mandarin that echoed off the towers and permeated every moment of living in that world. I knew at that moment that I could not remove it or its people from existence. My sentiment overruled my loyalty to country and party.

Not even my wife knows the truth of my past. I lied to her the day that we met and told her that I was a survivor of one of the armored divisions that fought along the Mongolian border. I worried, and continue to worry, that if she knew the truth I would be turned into the Directorate’s Ministry of State Security. I would be considered an undesirable and either immediately killed, mercifully, or sent on one of the suicide missions into Heilongjiang or Jilin Provinces, through fields of radioactivity to recover technology for Director Su’s military, more likely.

Thankfully, she cannot read or speak Russian, which saves me the explanation of why I am carrying with me a manual for the launch of an intercontinental missile. As I look around this city and see the desperation, the public torture sessions and executions held daily all across the city, the fear that permeates our every breath is enough to drive many insane. All I want to do is to try and take my family out of Xi’an and make our way south towards what I hope is the relative safety of the cities that I refused to destroy. I am not even sure if Hong Kong is still there, or if my reprogramming failed and the city was destroyed. It might be so awash in radioactivity from the detonations up and down Guangdong Province and the Pearl River that it is uninhabitable.

If it is gone like Moscow, Leningrad, Berlin, London, or New York, then perhaps I am one of the few people left alive who remember it for what it once was, the great melting pot of Asia. It was a city where one could go and get lost, where one’s identity did not matter, you could become whatever you want. As it stands now, living in this post-apocalyptic ruin is perhaps the closest I will come to getting back to that world. I should be grateful. My building superintendent, a lower echelon protégé of Director Su thinks, with some encouragement from me, that I was a KGB officer in Siberia. Ever since the first week I lived here, he has feared that I would come into his apartment at night, cut one of his arteries, and slowly bleed him to death. So, I have a nice apartment with running water, indoor plumbing, a small pre-war electric heater, and access to electricity three hours a day. There is something to be said for fear giving one access to luxuries. I owe my father and his military intelligence friends a perverse debt of gratitude for having taught me the value of a good and plausible lie and how it, and the right amount of fear, will keep you going.

So, on this day, January 1st of the year 1994, at the beginning of a new year, I decided when I woke up to spend this day, and as much of the next few weeks as possible recording my experiences in this manual. I decided that ten years was enough time living a lie, or at least an omission of a life. I write this down in hopes that someone, somewhere will read this and have some sympathy for a man who tried to live a moral life at the end of the world. As I write this, my wife and child are both asleep in the bedroom. I can hear my daughter, Ekaterina, snoring softly and my wife, Wang Rong, shifting her legs underneath the covers. I know that, at the very least, I have something now to live for.

That is why I am recording this. If it is not for posterity, then it is at least for her. I want her to know who I am and where we come from, even if it is not possible for her to know the truth until I am dead. She comes from a long and proud family with roots in Russia that stretch back to before Peter the Great. As my father used to say, ‘We have been the right hand of our Motherland since we helped drive the Golden Horde out of Muscovy.’ I hope that maybe a grandson of mine will return back to Moscow and help to rebuilt.

Hope is all I have now. When all else has been stripped from us, and the material comforts of the world rendered into so much ash, there has to be something to keep one from utter destitution. And so, let it be the hope that my morality has given the Petrov family a chance to redeem itself from what I expect was the failure of my father, General Mikhail Pronin, to refuse the order to turn the key and plunge our world into this madness. If that is all I have left to give my daughter, let it be so.

That being said, let me begin with how and why I ended up running a missile detachment in Siberia…”

My partner and I looked up and saw Ekaterina looking at a small, crumpled photograph she had clutched tightly in her hands. It was a black and white photograph of a man, his wife, and small daughter. The man had a look of pride on his face. His hair had fallen out around the temples, and crow’s feet had developed around his eyes. From the relative health of his face, it looked as if he had grown up with good food and medical care. His wife was slightly round and had the look of a Chinese peasant. She looked a little more weathered compared to her husband and wore a confused look on her face. It was obvious that, unlike her husband, she was not used to having her picture taken. Their daughter had a wide, beaming smile on her face that leapt out from the faded and crumpled photo. She handed me the photograph.

“That is my father, Vasili. On his death bed in hospital, he clung to that photograph and looked at it often. It was the only photo we ever took together as a family. He used to draw the contours of my mother’s face when he was not writing in the last of those journals. He finished his story a few days before he died,” she said in a sad, deflated tone.

“Please, I want you to have them. I know that he would want you to bring them back with you. Bring them back to Hong Kong. Tell the people there what he did for them. It is the least that I can do to honor his memory. I have read them so many times that they are committed to memory,” Ekaterina said.

She reached into her pocket and handed us something else. It was a patch of cloth, an emblem that looked torn off an old uniform. We looked closely and saw the Cyrillic lettering on the bottom of it.

“This was all that my father had left from his uniform. He tore it off his jacket before he entered Xi’an and put on civilian clothing. It is all the proof, along with that field manual and the journals, of the truth of his story. I know that it is not much to go on, but I suppose in this world it is all that is needed,” said Ekaterina.

With that, she left the room and went to the kitchen to fetch herself a bowl of borscht. We were left with the journals, and many questions.

 

[XFE]

Yes! Its alive!

 

[Archangel]

Very good update, General Paul!

 

[Jonathan Kan]

As a Hong Konger, I must say it's a moving update, but with a serious flaw: there was no such thing as "Soviet Consulate at HK", Russian Ferdation only managed to open one in 1994. It could be fixed by stated that Vasili Pronin was a KGB field agent at Hong Kong.

 

[General_Paul]

As a Hong Konger, I must say it's a moving update, but with a serious flaw: there was no such thing as "Soviet Consulate at HK", Russian Ferdation only managed to open one in 1994. It could be fixed by stated that Vasili Pronin was a KGB field agent at Hong Kong.

I'l go back and put that in. Thanks!!!

 

[General_Paul]

Hey Everyone,

New update, this time centered in our board's favorite entrepot into China, Hong Kong! I'm hoping that this isn't too far off the mark for the city. As always, I hope you all enjoy! Comments, criticisms, and creative suggestions welcomed!!!

© 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 3: The Old Guard

Waterfront, Victoria Harbor

Hong Kong, Republic of Hong Kong

Confederation of the Pearl River

June 1, 2016

I walked along the bustling shoreline of Hong Kong with one of the most famous men in southern China. Today, he wore an old Royal Navy uniform complete with cap and insignia. I suppose that he wanted to avoid recognition by looking like any other old British veteran who had retired, either by choice or necessity, in the city they had once governed from London. However, unlike most of the old British veterans his was an instantly recognizable face. A few of the locals who walked by us immediately requested to shake his hand, asked for an autograph, or more rarely a photograph.

There was not an ounce of hostility in the whole of the small crowd that gathered around us while he shook hands and generally acted the elder statesman. Surprising as it was that they recognized us on our walk along the waterfront, it was more surprising that there was little to no outward hostility expressed towards him, given his current role as lead negotiator between the Confederation of the Pearl River and the Vietnamese Federation. In the six years since he was named as lead negotiator, not a day has gone by that the South China Morning Post or the New Hong Kong Daily has not published a negative opinion piece or letter to the editor about the possible conflict of interest he would have in negotiating the treaty.

Even though this is more than enough to guess at his identity in Asia, for any readers overseas the intricacies of modern Hong Kong politics might be a bit too much. His name is Arthur Brown, former Captain in the Royal Navy, and former head of the Foreign Military Contingent that made up the bulk of Hong Kong’s military forces until the Confederation’s Combined Services were formed in 2004. More importantly he is the former Governor of Hong Kong, serving from 1997 until 2003 as the first popularly elected Head of State of the city-state. Brown was one of the architects of the territory’s 1997 Declaration of Independence, and helped to write not only the new Constitution for Hong Kong, but also helped to negotiate the Federation Treaty between Hong Kong and Macau in 1998. He was also the lead negotiator between the twin cities and the surviving communities in Guangdong and southern Fujian Provinces. Brown is considered to be one of the founders and architects of the growing order in southern China. As such, many consider him to be one of the most important figures in postwar China.

Much of the current controversy surrounding this leading figure in the negotiations with Vietnam stems from his business interests. Brown, along with several of his old advisers, founded the largest corporation in southern China, Anglo-Chinese Shipping, after he left office in 2004. In the twelve years since its founding, A-C Shipping has taken over the market for shipping and passenger travel in Southeast Asia. The company as corporate facilities up and down the coast between Taiwan, Fujian, Guangdong, Hainan, Vietnam, Cambodia, the survivor communities in Malaysia, and the Indonesian states. A-C Shipping is one of the most traded stocks on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and most graduates of the University of Hong Kong’s Masters of Business Administration dream of employment with A-C. For many living in southern China, Southeast Asia, and coastal Indonesia, A-C Shipping is the face of the city and region’s burgeoning economy.

Along with shipping, A-C has the contract for materials transport into the reconstruction and decontamination zone in Guangzhou. Sub-contractors working for A-C who rely on it for the lion’s share of their business have secured many of the most important contracts for the reconstruction of the most important rail lines out of Guangdong Province into Guangxi, Jiangxi, and Hunan Provinces. In effect, A-C and its subsidiaries and associated businesses have placed themselves at the heart of Hong Kong’s current and future efforts to rebuild southern and south-central China.

There is a reason why, for many who pay attention to politics, Arthur Brown is referred to as, “His Right Honourable Ambassador from Anglo-Chinese Shipping, the Corrupt Captain Brown.”

The same day that we spoke was just after the initial signing of the trade pact between the Vietnamese ambassador, Phong Nguyen, and Governor Fung. When I asked him why he chose to speak to me rather than attend the press conference, he told me that he did not, “…want to intrude on the conference,” and felt that he would be, “too much of a distraction from the very real accomplishments that we have had in negotiating and finalizing this trade deal.” We decided to take a walk along the waterfront where, moving in and out of Victoria Harbor, we could see freighters old and new bearing the distinctive linked “A-C” logo on their exhaust stacks. Sprinkled along the shipping lanes going in and out of the harbor were small independent tramp freighters, fishing boats, and a few traditional Chinese junks plying their trade as they had for centuries. It was a warm day, nearly thirty Celsius, but Brown insisted on wearing his uniform when being interviewed about his role as a Royal Navy officer during the Third World War.

When I asked him why, he told me, “It is important that my role as an officer of the Royal Navy be separated from my role as a public official who served the interests of the residents and citizens of Hong Kong and the New Territories.” He told me this as we left A-C’s corporate headquarters, located in one of the new high rise towers in the heart of Central Hong Kong. There was the distinct chatter of electric typewriters as we left the office, and I spied a few green-and-black monitor displays of old pre-war Apple II computers. A-C Shipping was doing well, indeed, if it could afford to have its secretaries and executives use such technology as pre-war desktop personal computers for daily work activities.

“It is our goal that every outpost of A-C have at least one computer linked to the central mainframe here in Hong Kong by 2020,” Brown said when I asked him about the computers. I had recently read that A-C was pairing up with AT&T Hong Kong to begin laying new telephone lines, manufactured in huge new plants on the other side of the border in Guangdong, between Hong Kong and its outposts up and down the coast.

Like the old maps that showed telegraph lines radiating out from London towards the many far-flung colonial possessions that made up the British Empire, so too would A-C’s empire spread across Southeast Asia, linking the whole region together into a reconstructed communications network. Although it would initially benefit A-C, the economic side effect would be to drastically increase the personal and economic ties of Southeast Asia across thousands of kilometers of land and water that have not had meaningful real time communication access in over three decades. There were even rumors of a planned spur line running south, through the Indonesian successor states, to connect A-C and the Federated Twin Cities with Australia, New Zealand, and the former British and French possessions in the South Pacific.

When I asked him about it, Brown merely gave me that now famous cockeyed grin and said, “No comment!”

He pushed me to stick to questions about his pre-war role as a Royal Navy officer. Almost every school child in Hong Kong knows the story of Captain Brown and the Salvation of Southern China. They know the story of Brown, the man who convinced the then-Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Edward Youde, to evacuate the population of the city, or as many of them as would fit, into the underground shelters, basements, parking garages, and military bunkers as could fit. Those who could not were put into the sealed holds of freighters and military vessels at anchor in Victoria Harbor.

What is less discussed, however, is his highly controversial involvement in the post-war government policies implemented by Governor Youde and the Emergency Council of Hong Kong. These policies included the imposition of work quotas for all persons working non-essential jobs in the immediate aftermath of the war. In effect, anyone not working as a farmer or as a laborer in an electronics factory in the New Territories, or working to maintain the city’s communications infrastructure was put to work on decontamination efforts. More controversial, and considered far worse than anything else he had done, was the use of a work-for-food rationalization that very closely mirrored the policies of post-exchange regional commissioners in the United Kingdom.

His orders to surviving naval assets after the Exchange have continued to garner controversy and attention for thirty years. His orders to sink all Chinese civilian and military vessels that refused to heave to and surrender resulted in the sinking of a handful of surviving People’s Liberation Army-Navy vessels and the deaths of hundreds of Chinese sailors. The sinking of the tramp freighter Tai-Pan off Victoria Harbor in May 1984 with several hundred refugees from Fujian Province continues to be the best known of the policy. Although, there are lesser known sinking’s that include a break-bulk cargo vessel from Hainan, and a large fishing trawler that was, according to conspiracy theorists, sunken by surviving SAS elements helicoptered onboard after it was discovered that commanders of a Hainan PLA garrison were onboard the ship.

Lastly, and probably the best known of the postwar incidents is his involvement with the 1987 Kowloon Walled City Riots. It was there that Brown ordered surviving Royal Marines to use live ammunition against refugees from Guangdong and Hainan who settled in the Kowloon Walled City and were protesting against government residency policy. They were also demanding access to education, housing, and medical services which was explicitly banned by Governor Youde’s 1984 Emergency Declaration. Brown continues to claim, both to me during our interview and to the media when asked, that he was informed by the Royal Hong Kong Police that the refugees were armed with bayonets, machetes, Molotov cocktails, and a few leftover Type 56’s brought into the city by surviving PLA soldiers. In the two days that followed, some 300 refugees were killed and another 700 wounded by Marines and the Royal Hong Kong Police in their suppression of the riots.

Ultimately, though, the issue that drove the rioters (Refusal to grant permanent residency to war refugees) was settled two years later in a landmark Hong Kong Supreme Court case that granted all war refugees permanent residency and access to all city services as if they were Hong Kong residents. In the years that followed, surviving family members have successfully sued for damages against what is now the Hong Kong Marines and the Hong Kong Police Force. Brown continues to resist paying damages for his involvement.

Although I agreed to stick to questions about the war, initially, I knew that eventually in our conversation I would ask him difficult questions about these and other postwar events that continue to cause controversy and discussion in many corners throughout the city and outside.

“You know, the first thing that I think of when I remember those weeks before the war was the absolute sense of calm that pervaded the services. One of my public school chaps was an RAF officer commanding a Vulcan bomber. He didn’t seem phased by the idea of war with the Soviets, or by the prospect of a showdown. I think that is, at least partially, because no one really thought the protests in East Berlin would spiral out of control in the way that they did,” Brown explained.

“I resisted the transfer to HMS Tamar fiercely. I had served onboard HMS Invincible during the Falkland Islands War, and the prospect of being transferred to a shore station in the Far East held little appeal for me, especially with my rank and experience. My friends and shipmates onboard the Invincible would get to see real action against the Soviet Navy while I would be busy filing telex reports back to London. I figured if I was very lucky I might get the chance to organize convoys between Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. HMS Tamar seemed a death sentence for my career. I would never get the chance to command a vessel in combat at the rate I was going, I kept thinking,” said Brown.

“The worst part of it was the immediacy of the transfer. There were so many transfers of combat experienced veterans off the Invincible and the HMS Hermes. In retrospect, it looks like the Royal Navy was doing exactly what I would have done: Spread the experience around to as many of the overseas posts as possible to ensure they could disseminate combat knowledge to their subordinates and train them correctly. It still does not help that I had three days to pack my belongings for an indefinite period of time. I had a nice flat in London with my girlfriend who I begged to come with me to Hong Kong. She refused and told me she would rather stay in the city and be near her friends and family, ‘if the worst thing happens.’ She told me she did not want to die alone in a city in Asia. I can’t blame her. I don’t even know if she would have survived if she had been here. I don’t know, but I would like to think she would have,” he said in a sad tone. I could tell that, unlike many things that happened after the Exchange, this in particular still bothered him. He stared off at the harbor for a moment before continuing on.

“I still don’t know when or how she died. Since the regional commission that was set up to run London did not survive past the first few days after the Exchange, no one has been able to work up an effective census of the London area in the 1980s and 90s. I’m fairly certain my parents died when Newcastle was hit. At least it was fast, or I’d like to think so anyway. I would like to know, at least, that she died quickly, with no pain. That it was over in an instant. I hate to think of her struggling through the radioactive ruins, trying to find food or shelter, knowing she was going to end up like so many others, succumbing to radiation sickness. I’ve seen too many people go through that here to think that she went through it too…” Brown trailed off again. Rather than standing in one place, he started walking again.

As we walked silently down the shore, the sounds of the harbor, dockworkers, and families out for an afternoon stroll in the early summer heat. He stopped now and again to cast a lingering stare on the various military vessels that were at anchor in Victoria Harbor. Even though he was long since retired from active service, it was apparent that his first love was still the Royal Navy, or at least what was left of it here in the Far East.

He pointed out a vessel in harbor, the former HMS Achilles, a Leander-class frigate that was involved in the Falklands War and that was transferred to Hong Kong in the weeks leading up to the Third World War. The ship was rusting at anchor, having been decommissioned in 2007 after her replacement, the HKS Victoria, a brand new Victoria-Class Frigate built in the Kowloon Peninsula Yards, came into service.

“That, right there, used to be the pride of the Royal Navy, a symbol of British power that could deploy anywhere around the world, independent of American naval support if need be. Now, she’s just an old warship, long past her prime, a few years away from being scrapped. It’s a sad thing to see a ship like that in that state,” he said.

Like many of the survivors I and my partners had the opportunity to interview over the past few years, both in Hong Kong and throughout the accessible areas of interior China, former Captain Brown had a deep and profound connection back across the yawning chasm of nuclear war back to the old world. Unlike those brought up in the decades since the war, Brown could remember what things were like when the world had enough food and when shortages were what happened in the developing world. Even he, with his years of public service to the citizens of Hong Kong and his post-2004 business success, seems drawn to the old world that he grew up in.

“I know that for those of you who grew up in Hong Kong during the boom years of the late 1990’s and the first decade of this century feel like our city is the pinnacle of civilization in the Far East, but when I tell you that it is a pale shadow compared to pre-war London, Vienna, or New York, I do not say it lightly.”

“What we have now is an improvement over the burnt out wreck that was the world after the nuclear exchange, and we are on the right track here to institute a new order in China in the coming decades. I even understand the feeling that the world will turn out better than the one that was destroyed thirty years ago. But, that being said, there are many days when I wish that I could go back to it.”

“There was peace, security, and constant technological and, seemingly anyway, political progress. The Americans had put a man on the moon, personal computers were springing up in the houses of elderly grandmothers in Suffolk. We were on our way toward great things. Now, I can see progress, but I’ll be damned to say that the world is better off for having experienced the last three decades of chaos. Our world is more dangerous, more unforgiving than it once was. Life is cheap now, much more so than it used to be. The fifteen thousand refugees permanently camped at Shek Kong Airfield are a testament to what our world has gone through and what we still have to fix,” Brown explained.

When I pointedly asked him at that point what he thought the opinion of the three hundred dead refugees in the Kowloon Walled City would have been, he did not reply.

“The Governor General called me and those transferred officers ranked Lieutenant Commander and above in to a conference at Government House in late January. The pre-war officer transfers were still ongoing, and Governor Youde made it a priority for us to set up a working group that coordinate with the emergency services of the city and the New Territories to prepare for any eventuality. We all knew the coded language that the governor was using; ‘any eventuality’ seemed a Churchillian turn of phrase that, in reality, meant; ‘If and when the world cocks up and the missiles start flying, how many residents can we evacuate off Hong Kong Island to the New Territories, or at least how many can we get up Victoria Peak and away from the general fallout zone?” Brown said.

We continued walking down the waterfront and stopped at a small baozi stand set up on the side of the road. The vendor had gotten his hands on a very god cut of pork and was making a killing off the greasy buns. We purchased two each and continued walking down the sidewalk, quietly enjoying the street delicacies. It was not until the mid-2000s that roadside vendors were allowed to operate freely without ration control by the government, even after the city signed trade deals in the mid-1990 with local communities to import meat and vegetables. Many of the older residents remarked that it was not until the street vendors were allowed to ply their trade without government controls that a sense of normalcy had returned to the city after twenty-plus years.

“The other thing that took some getting used to was the constant screaming of jet aircraft taking off from Kai Tak, Shek Kong, and the other RAF landing strips and aerodromes scattered around Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the rest of the New Territories. I was used to hearing fighters taking off and landing when I was stationed on the Invincible, but that was part of the routine sounds of a ship on patrol. But, when it was on shore, it was out of place by my ears.”

“The city took on much of the feeling of a forward operating base for the British military and staging ground in those weeks leading up to the war. In retrospect, it is a miracle that the city survived the war at all, and not a minor miracle at that. What few Soviet survivors we have interviewed since the Exchange were shocked that we never received a single hit from the Soviet Rocket Forces or from the PLA’s Second Artillery Corps. Maybe the Chicom’s had other plans for us. Whatever they were, they never came to pass.”

We both paused for a second as an aircraft passed overhead. It was a smaller, twin-engine aircraft on approach to Kai Tak. The words, “Philippine Airways” was written on the side of the Brazilian built passenger aircraft. In the distance, we could hear the sounds of larger passenger aircraft taking off from Kai Tak, which is now busiest airport in Asia. It is also the largest surviving airport in Asia as well. I spied in the distance a few rebuilt Harrier jets taking off as well, along with military and civilian helicopters.

With the new trade deals signed between the twin Federated Cities, Vietnam, and Burma, ever increasing amounts of gasoline and refined aircraft fuel are beginning to make their way into the commercial market. As a result, Cathay Pacific Airways alongside Taiwan based China Airlines have begun once again making long haul commercial flights for passengers from Kai Tak to destinations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. There have even been several chartered flights between Hong Kong and North America, although there are no plans currently to re-establish permanent flights back and forth to the United States.

Brown stared off at a C-130 transport in China Airlines livery taking off from Kai Tak. He seemed to be processing something for a minute. He cleared his throat and looked at me. His weathered eyes seemed to bore right into me with a look of absolute focus. I was not sure how to react.

“Before we go any further, I need to say this. I understand that you and your team are scholars and journalists trying to put this book together. I even understand the need to ask difficult questions. But, before you go off judging us for your actions back then, put yourself into our shoes,” Brown said.

I averted my eyes from his intense stare and looked out at the harbor. I was uncomfortable, but I tried to keep a cool outside demeanor.

“How so,” I asked coolly, trying not to accuse him of attempting to intimidate me.

“The world was destroyed. You all act now like you would have performed better with thirty years of experience dealing with this, but no one can be prepared for the destruction of the world that they grew up in, and the deaths of every person they ever cared for in the space of a day. One day was all it took. Everything that we knew was erased. Hundreds of years of human advancement was wiped out. Cities blasted into rubble. Survivors irradiated and left to die alone in basements, bomb shelters, or above ground where they breathed in the ashes of the dead with their every waking moment.”

“We were left to pick up what few pieces remained. My family was dead. The woman I loved was dead. And when we got out of the bomb shelters and basements, we knew that it was our responsibility to put the world back together again. Do you know how to control forty thousand starving, irradiated, and hostile refugees rushing a border? Do you have any idea how to clean up and identify sixty thousand dead bodies scattered throughout the New Territories? Do you know the logistical nightmare that it was to disinfect and remove radiation in the Kowloon Walled City?”

“No. You have no idea what it was like, and I suspect that you do not want to know either. Order had to be restored and the people made safe, or at least made to feel safe. That meant some had to be sacrificed in order for the rest to survive. I felt and still feel awful about the events in 1988 in the Walled City, just as I feel awful about the treatment of those refugees who survived the bombs and radiation only to die of malnutrition in the shadow of Hong Kong’s skyscrapers.”

“We had little food, no available shelter for the hundreds of thousands that would be making their way towards us, our water supply was tainted by radioactivity, and we had a population within the territory of Hong Kong and the New Territories of 5.4 million that we had to take care of. That was why we initiated the draconian rations program. That was why we limited the numbers of refugees we allowed to cross the border from Shenzhen. That was why I ordered live ammunition use at the Luohu and Huanggang Border Crossings. We could not support the numbers we had, never mind letting in the population of Shenzhen as well.”

“That was why everyone from your parents to me had rice-less days, meat-less days, and even water-less days. We did things that you will not know about for a hundred years that were necessary to keep this city alive.”

“So, before you go judging us in this book, I want you to know that you are here and you are alive because of the actions that I and the rest of Her Majesty’s Government in Hong Kong took in 1984 and 1985. Perhaps, before you start asking ‘difficult questions’ about the war and what came after, you should be a little more grateful that you are even here to ask those questions?”

Brown stood up, pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket, roughly shoved one in his mouth, and lit it. He took a long, angry drag of it and turned his back on me. The former Royal Navy captain looked out at Victoria Harbor, his eyes fixed on a point near the harbor’s entrance. I waited to stand up and walk away. I figured that would be the end of my interview. He turned around and looked at me.

“Alright. Ask your questions. At this point, I have nothing left to hide,” Brown said. He flicked his cigarette into the harbor and cocked his head in the direction of the city. I stood up and followed him.

 

[Archangel]

What's Macau's level of autonomy?

 

[General_Paul]

What's Macau's level of autonomy?

I'm calling it a "Federated" City alongside Hong Kong and eventually Shenzhen, so it's nominally as autonomous as HK. But, given the lack of arable land and natural resources available in the territory, it's pretty dependent on HK to ensure continued food shipments and water rights. They will start coordinating after the worst of the fallout recedes in March and April for relief and security.

What I might end up having the Portuguese do is annex Hengquin Island just to the west of Macau proper, and eventually spread out into Xiangzhou District. Then they'll have a little more room to evacuate refugees and maybe some areas to set up small communal farms. Hengquin Island would be pretty easy for them to annex, as the PRC's central government will cease to exist on February 22, 1984. As of 2014, the population of the whole island is 6300, fairly small for a one-hundred and six square kilometer island in China next to a major population center. By 2015 I think probably Macau would also encompass Zhuhai.

In summary: Macau grew after the Exchange, but it's still absolutely dependent on HK for its survival for the time being.

I'm going to have a Macau/Portuguese perspective introduced later on in the story in regard to the security situation. I figured it'd be interesting to have someone who lived through the Portuguese colonial wars in Angola and Mozambique commenting on the use of force against refugees fleeing the nuclear apocalypse.

 

[General_Paul]

Okay so that map shows the general layout of southern China and the close distance between HK, Macau, and Guangzhou which was a major Soviet target. Both of the cities are hemmed in by Guangzhou immediately after the exchange and for the first decade or so after the bombs fall. It's only 174 kilometers from Hong Kong and the New Territories to Guangzhou, and a good chunk of that land is filled with cities like Shenzhen, Shantou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, and Foshan. In those first ten years, both HK and Macau as the most effective remaining central governments in the region will have to find willing partners in those cities to work with in order to ensure some level of stability. Those cities and others will end up reorganizing, but that won't be for at least 10-15 years.

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

Brilliant updates, Paul; pleased to see this continue at such a pace! So how does HK make its living: as the bridge between South China and the maritime Asia-Pacific? I mean, I can imagine the Tasman states being happy to ship food northwards, but what's in it for them?

 

[General_Paul]

Brilliant updates, Paul; pleased to see this continue at such a pace! So how does HK make its living: as the bridge between South China and the maritime Asia-Pacific? I mean, I can imagine the Tasman states being happy to ship food northwards, but what's in it for them?

Thanks Tsar!

HK's role in the postwar world is definitely as the bridge between South China and the rest of the Asia-Pacific. But, along with that, HK and Macau are also the heart of the Confederation of the Pearl River, a recent amalgam of the federated cities of HK and Macau and a federation made up of surviving coastal settlements.

South China is the economic heart of 21st Century China, and HK is sponsoring industrial and infrastructure re-construction in Guangdong Province and into the south-central provinces. Even though Guangzhou bit it in the exchange, cities like Shenzhen and Dongguan survived, meaning that there is something approaching a manufacturing base along with the factories in HK that produced consumer goods for the European market. They can export consumer goods and electronics, along with smaller amounts of construction materials like steel and concrete. Since Shenzhen and Dongguan were really built in the early 80's as close to HK as possible so that they could ship stuff from the mainland to markets in the west, and since they were not yet big enough to justify warheads, those factories would have survived. Getting them back up and operational wouldn't be as much of a challenge after the radioactivity subsides.

But, they're overshadowed by the surviving Guomindang from Taiwan who are returning back to the mainland. They have more modern manufacturing abilities and they're eventually going to overtake the HK economy by the 2040s and 50s as they rebuild Fujian, Zhejiang, and eventually Jiangsu Provinces. By the 100th anniversary of the exchange, most of China will again be under some nation-state, federation, or organization of post-war states with HK and Taiwan in the driver's seat in terms of political unification.

 

[Unknown]

I don't envy Brown. At all.

 

[General_Paul]

Okay, I do have a question for those of you who would know:

What kind of forces would the British and Portuguese forward deploy to HK and Macau before the outbreak of the war? I've looked up British Overseas Forces Hong Kong, but the China Squadron doesn't have any updated deployments after 1945. I know Macau had no effective military after 1974 following the Carnation Revolution and the '79 Sino-Portuguese Agreement cemented Macau's demilitarized status. But, in the hectic days and weeks before February 22, what are the odds that the Portuguese would dispatch at least a battalion to Macau to keep the peace?

Hong Kong I expect would have turned into a militarized FOB with deployments of fighter aircraft, SAS, and a heavy Royal Navy presence to maintain trade lines. Anyone have any idea what those deployments for the British would have looked like?

 

[XFE]

Very much how I imagined post war Hong Kong--albiet a darker vision of Hong Kong.

 

[Tsar of New Zealand]

Okay, I do have a question for those of you who would know:

What kind of forces would the British and Portuguese forward deploy to HK and Macau before the outbreak of the war?...Macau had no effective military after 1974 following the Carnation Revolution and the '79 Sino-Portuguese Agreement cemented Macau's demilitarized status. But, in the hectic days and weeks before February 22, what are the odds that the Portuguese would dispatch at least a battalion to Macau to keep the peace?

Even that I feel would be too provocative to the Chinese, as well as drawing resources away from the rapidly-heating European theatre. Maybe a sizable police contingent for law and order, and perhaps they could get a consignment of arms as well - but actual Army boots on the ground? Seems unlikely.