For the third time in 21 years Peiping's citizens last week prepared to receive an approaching conqueror. At first their preparations were scarcely perceptible. Skaters still weaved across Nan Hai Lake, near the Forbidden City. In the adjoining park, old gentlemen taking their caged songsters for an airing paused to compare birds. The lovely city (its name means "Northern Peace") expected, even looked forward to a quick, peaceful turnover.
General Fu Tso-yi, Nationalist commander in the north, shattered the city's traditional calm. For a fortnight he had been pulling his troops back from one outlying position after another. His "North China Corridor" had been chopped up into three closets—Kalgan, Peiping, Tientsin. Everything looked ready for a surrender.
Then Fu announced that he would defend Peiping to the death. He moved his headquarters, which had been four miles out of town, into the heart of the city, impressed thousands of coolies into digging trenches and throwing up street barricades. A hundred thousand soldiers swirled through the gates, went from house to house commandeering billets.
Communist General Lin Piao followed hard on Fu's heels, drew a siege ring around the city. By week's end both airfields outside the city walls were in Communist hands. Electricity and water lines were cut. Food prices doubled and tripled; fresh vegetables and meat almost disappeared from the markets.
To restore some contact with the outside world, Fu ordered construction of an airstrip on the polo ground of the old legation quarter, in the heart of the city. Gangs of padded-gowned forced labor leveled telephone poles, trees and buildings on the approaches to the strip. Enterprising citizens dashed in to gather up precious firewood for their chilly hearths. Three days after construction began, two Chinese army cargo planes settled on to the perilously cramped runway. They were unable to take off again. Fu's airstrip seemed to be a one-way street.
Peipingers looked on all this activity as a rude intrusion on the quiet culture of their ancient capital. "General Fu is not defending Peiping," they told each other, "Peiping is defending General Fu." There was much to support this view. It was a common rumor that the Reds had picked the lovely cultural center for their national capital. A Communist spokesman in Hong Kong said flatly: "No Chinese army will take the responsibility of destroying Peiping."