424WAR AND REVOLUTION porary Chinese estimates were as much as ten times higher,and it is difficu to establish exact figures.Certainly robbery,wanton destruction,and arso left much of the city in ruins,and piles of dead bodies were observablei countless locations.There is no obvious explanation for this grim event no perhaps can one be found.The Japanese soldiers,who had expected cas victory,instead had been fighting hard for months and had taken infinitel higher casualties than anticipated.They were bored,angry,frustrated,tired The Chinese women were undefended,their menfolk powerless or absen The war,still undeclared,had no clear-cut goal or purpose.Perhaps Chinese regardless of sex or age seemed marked out as victims. While the violence raged in Nanjing,the surviving Nationalist armi withdrew up the Yangzi to the west,with the goal of consolidating Wuhan,site of the opening salvos of the birth of the republic and later s of the Communists'brightest hopes.Fighting continued in central Chi throughout the first half of 1938.The string of Japanese victoriesw checked only occasionally,as at the southern Shandong town of Taie zhuang near the major railway junction of Xuzhou.Here in April,Li Zo ren,one of Chiang's best generals,fought a brilliant battle,luringth Japanese army into a trap and killing as many as 30,000 of its combat troo proving to the world that with inspired leadership and good weaponst Chinese could hold their own.But he could not sustain the victory and h to retreat.Xuzhou fell to the Japanese in May. As the Japanese advanced yet f rther west to the ancient capital of K feng,which would win them control of the crucial railroad leading sou to Wuhan,Chiang Kai-shek ordered his engineers to blow up the dikes the Yellow River.The ensuing giant flood stalled the Japanese for the Zheng THE WAR IN CENTRAL CHNA.1937-1938 uzhou ●★aMay1938) J IAN G S U Nanjing ★ Shanghai ●★(Aug0ct.1937) HUBE Chinese (carly 1938 Wuha (1te31938 ember195罗 apanese forc 898 ZHEJIANG ng Lake