The Manchurian Warlords

     In The Manchurian Tales, I make reference to the Chinese warlord of Manchuria Chang Tso Lin and the fact that he ruled Manchuria as his own private estate.  Chang Tso Lin, whose name is also written as Zhang Zoulin and several other ways, was the all powerful warlord of Manchuria from about the late Ching Dynasty to 1928 when he was assassinated by the Japanese.  Chang started his career as a bandit, a "hoonhoozy" in Manchuria.  He was from a poor farmer's family and had no  education to speak of.  It is said that he ran across a wounded "hoonhoozy" while in the woods, overpowered him and killed him with an ax, then took his horse and gun and became a "hoonhoozy" himself.  He quickly rose in power within his outlaw band and soon converted his group of brigands into an army unit by volunteering to fight for the Ching Dynasty during the Boxer Rebellion.  When the Ching Dynasy fell, Chang simply declared himself the ruler of Manchuria and increased the size of his unofficial army.  China was in complete chaos, divided and ruled by various warlords.  In contrast, Manchuria was relatively peaceful.  Russians had the city of Harbin which was very prosperous, the Japanese had gained concessions after the Russo-Japanese War and had control of Southern Manchurian Railway as well as the peninsula known as Kwantung with the port of Dairen.  Japanese stationed their army in the region which became known as the Kwantung Army.
     Chang Tso Lin set up headquarters in the old Manchurian capital of Mukden (Shenyang today) and built himself a huge villa.  He had by that time gathered a 100,000 man  army, known as Fengtian Army, well armed and being trained by Russian mercenaries who were former Tsarist officers.  He controlled the agricultural and opium trade in Manchuria.  He even had his own currency set up in Manchuria.  Very wisely, he left Harbin alone, knowing that it would be foolish to mess with something that worked well.  He simply collected taxes as a "representative" of Nationalist government.  Naturally, the Nationalist government did not see a penny of the money that he made.  He was completely independent, although Nationalist government allowed him to represent them!  Strange bedfellows!
     Japan knew better than to mess with Chang Tso Lin, for he at least kept Manchuria under control, the "hoonhoozy" in particular.  Japan had its own problems with Korean Freedom fighters and communist guerrillas that operated in southern Manchuria, so they struck a deal with Chang Tso Lin.  Basically it was that they would leave him alone if he kept Manchuria under control.  It was a pretty good deal for a while, for both sides.  However, Chang Tso Lin got somewhat ambitious and his dream was to rule all of China.  He had built up the Fengtian Army to 300,000 men, even had an air force!  He invaded China and fought the war lord who controlled the area around Peking (Beijing).  On his second attempt he managed to conquer the territory and rule from Peking for a while!  However, he was beginning to cooperate less and less with the Japanese and so the Japanese assassinated him in 1928.  A bomb was planted under a bridge where Chang Tso Lin's private train crossed!
     Japan was eager to see Chang Tso Lin's son, Chang Su Liang (Zhang Xueliang) take over.  The son was totally opposite of his father in many ways.  He was well educated in the West....spoke several languages, and was, like his father, a womanizer.  He was also an opium addict.  But after his father's death, he managed to kick the drug habit and stayed sober for the rest of his life.  However,  he did not care for Japanese rule and when Japan established the Manchukuo puppet regime, he found himself without a home.  Instead of remaining in Manchuria, Chang Su Liang plunged himself into the chaos that was taking place in China.  With the Japanese invasion of China at the start of Sino-Japanese War, Chang urged Chiang Kai Shek and Mao Tse Tung to unit and fight against Japanese.  Although he felt that the communists were a bigger threat to China than the Japanese, he believed that Chinese should first get rid of the Japanese.  He kidnapped Chiang Kai Shek at one point, trying to set up a meeting with the communists to agree upon a cease fire and fight the Japanese.  Obviously, his plan did not work as he planned, but it did work somewhat.  Both Chiang and Mao turned their attention to the Japanese for the duration of the war.
     In 1943, even before Japan surrendered, the Chinese civil war started in earnest again and Chiang immediately had Chang Su Liang arrested and imprisoned.  When the Nationalists fled to Taiwan in 1949, Chang Su Liang was taken along and kept under house arrest for the next 40 years!  During his "captivity" he became a devout Baptist and studied Chinese history.  After Chiang died in 1975, Chang requested that he be allowed to leave Taiwan.  He was finally granted permission in 1993 when he moved to Hawaii.  He lived quietly for the next 8 years before his death in 2001.  No one in Hawaii knew who he was and what part he played in the history of northeast Asia.  He was just an old man who was a devout Baptist who seemed to be very much into Chinese history.