ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that as a long war stretched on, the Nationalist government’s ostentatious rhetoric and heroic attempts at national resistance could no longer satisfy its political opponents or even some of its supporters. The Japanese advances slowed down after most of China’s coastal regions fell, but there was nothing calm or stable about China’s situation after the fall of Wuhan. The long journey into the hinterland, for many elite women who had enjoyed a comfortable if not luxurious lifestyle before the war, was not entirely a pleasant experience. Chongqing did not transform into a well-planned capital city overnight because of the arrival of the Nationalist government. Yan’an became the de facto wartime capital of the communist regime. Between 1939 and 1940, the constitutionalist movement quickly spread to other cities that were not occupied by the Japanese, such as Chengdu, Xi’an, Guiyang, Yan’an, and Hong Kong.
