Perhaps there is no district anywhere in Shanghai which was harder hit by the 1937 war. Yet, if one follows a certain devious path among crumbled walls and charred beams and steps over discouraging piles of bricks, one comes suddenly upon— life!
Every house that still stands in the terrace, off Juikin Road near East Yuhang Road, has been damaged by shell or fire and has been looted. One day Chinese soldiers were in possession of the block—their sandbag barricades may still be seen—and the next day the Japanese marine occupied it. But through it all an elderly Chinese watchman and his 7-year-old daughter remained and are still living at 117 Juikin Road, of which now only the ground floor stands, daylight even showing where a shell sheared off a part of its outside wall near the ceiling.
Only for a day or so did Foo Soong-ling and his tiny daughter, Sian Yoong, leave their abode and hide in other houses to keep out of the actual hand-to-hand fighting. They never left the district, however, and they have not been "south of the Creek" since last summer. They are the only family that stayed in the area through the weeks of shelling, bombing, close-range fighting and fires, and are still there. In other houses near-by the curious intruder sometimes comes upon human bones, attesting death by violence or from starvation. Old Foo and his child escaped unscratched. The little girl is the picture of health and cheerfulness, and the father complains only of a dropsical condition of his legs due to an insufficiency of vegetables. Friendly police officers at the Kashing Road Station see that he now gets enough greens and fruit to correct that disability.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.