00:00At the beginning of 1938, the Englishman George Hogg arrived in China as an independent journalist.
00:06In 1941, at the invitation of his friend Rewai Ali, George Hogg became the director of the Bailey Technical School in Shang-Chi.
00:16Here, in our place, everything is very calm.
00:21No bombing even, as all the Japanese planes are temporarily engaged elsewhere.
00:26We have a school here full of oddly humorous boys.
00:31One of them lost his mother on a crowded ferry while evacuating Shanghai and never found her or his family again.
00:38One is a newspaper vendor or was.
00:41Four or five are refugees from Manchuria since the Mukden incident of 1931.
00:47These sharp-witted ones are mixed up with some native peasant boys.
00:50They learn to talk each other's dialects, big ones, small ones, middle school graduates and near-illiterates,
00:57all mixed up and all learning from each other, and I from them.
01:01They're just at the age when Chinese kids are most apt to begin to be nationalistic.
01:07We had a few stormy sessions about opium wars, foreign concessions and such like,
01:11but it all calmed down when they realized that, in spite of the height of the respective bridges of our noses,
01:16we really saw more or less eye to eye on these subjects.
01:19We've only got about 30 boys so far.
01:23They learn all kinds of things.
01:26Each day there are five hours of classwork plus three and a half hours practical work in our own workshop
01:31or in various co-ops in the neighborhood.
01:34I don't teach much, some English, economic geography, current affairs, singing and cooperation,
01:40but there is plenty to do putting the school on its feet and organizing things in general.
01:45My original plan to stay in China for six months or so and get a deeper knowledge of the country than I would
01:53as an ordinary tourist certainly extended itself.
01:57Didn't it?
01:58I don't think I shall ever be able to leave it permanently anymore.
02:02My job will be to link up with other countries and peoples or to work inside.
02:07In 1944, as the war situation grew increasingly tense,
02:15George Hogg and his friend Rewi Ali set off from Shuangshapu with the students,
02:20traveling through the Hashi Corridor to reach Shandan.
02:22In the central region of Gansu, the cold was so bitter that some students, weakened by illness,
02:30could no longer walk, so George Hogg carried them on his back.
02:34After a journey of more than 1,000 kilometers, all the teachers and students safely reached Shandan.
02:40Once there, George led people in forging machine parts from scrap metal,
02:47building dams to harness hydraulic power, and producing bricks and tiles from desert sand and gravel.
02:56In just half a year, a once barren wasteland had risen into a thriving Little Bailey town.
03:02In the summer of 1945, George fell ill and died at the young age of 30.
03:13Before his death, with trembling hands, he wrote his final wish.
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