"Conditions in the Kuomintang area can only be described as very bad... they didn't have any system of rationing. They had a very cruel and corrupt system of conscription... the troops really supported themselves by robbing the people in the areas in which they were stationed. (國民黨腐敗,抓壯丁,軍隊給養來自搶劫當地老百姓)
"There was tremendous inflation. This bred corruption in every sphere because it encouraged people to hoard and buy up goods which raised prices even more... it was a vicious circle, the whole life in China. (通貨膨脹非常厲害, 造成全方位腐敗 。。。。)
"[With the communist areas]... it was a contrast between night and day. (共產黨方麵完全不同。。。
"What surprised us most was the tremendous air of confidence. They had almost nothing... but the confidence that they were on the winning side was staggering. (他們什麽資源都沒有,但是人人都相信必勝..)
"Everyone was very friendly to everyone else - there was no sort of fancy living for anybody. There was no using of fancy titles..."
He goes on to talk about the personalities of Mao and the various Chinese generals he met at the time.
"For someone that lived in China in the bad old days [Jack Service lived there from 1909 to 1945] the thing that strikes you now is that it is a country that is unified, it's a going concern, it's a modern state.
"This is a feeling you never got in the old China.
"This has been responsible for a whole new attitude in the people, a spirit... what's happened to China [has given] the people an air of confidence, of self-respect."
"There is a new spirit of egalitarianism - certainly the top leaders have their motor cars and live in a better house, but in dress and in manner and in approach to other people there is a surprising equality which wasn't there before.
"No one has any need to be servile or humble or obsequious. The man who waits on you in the hotel dining room... he talks to you straight and direct as man to man in a way that you would never meet in China in the old days.
"People are better clothed, better fed. No more beggars. No more poverty. Streets are clean. And so on.
"But there's a real change that's more deep than that.
"In the old days perhaps 10% of the people were literate. Today it's reversed. All the children go to school now."