Early in his tenure as commander of the United States’ World War II mission in China, Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell expressed a grudging fondness for the damp, ramshackle capital deep in the country’s southwest that would be his base for the next several years. “Chungking isn’t half bad when the sun shines,” the plain-spoken general wrote in his diary, using the spelling of the period. But his tolerance for the underserviced, refugee-laden town perched high above the Yangtze River did not last. Read more
