1979年中越战争的阴影

choi

Jane Perlez, 中越关系，并未走出1979年战争的阴影. July 7, 2014
cn.nytimes.com/asia-pacific/20140707/c07vietnam/

, which is translated from

Jane Perlez, Shadow of Brutal ‘79 War Darkens Vietnam’s View of China Relations. New York Times, July 7, 2014.

Quote:

“Both sides declared victory then, though neither side prevailed, and both armies suffered horrendous losses.

“The combined death [from both sides: China and Vietnam] toll has been estimated at least 50,000 troops, along with 10,000 Vietnamese civilians.

Note:
(a) The quotation above is about the (1979) Sino-Vietnamese War (also known as the Third Indochina War). )Both names of the war comes from Wikipedia.)
(b) Lạng Sơn  諒山
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lạng_Sơn
(a city; capital of Lạng Sơn Province)

(c) “The memories are strong not only because of the death toll but also because the Chinese pummeled towns and villages as they withdrew, destroying schools and hospitals, in what the Chinese military later called a ‘goodbye kiss.’”
(i) The cn.nytimes,.com translates “goodbye kiss” as 临别之吻.
(ii) I am uncertain whether goodbye kiss or 临别之吻 are widely used in either nation (particularly China). because I can find nothing with the Chinese term (it is possible Chinese term is in fact not 临别之吻, but something close). As for English term, I can only find one:

lde (name of the blogger_, Conversations With Chinese Intelligence Officials. Pushing On (name of his blog), July 2, 2014
lde421.blogspot.com/2011/07/conversations-with-chinese-intelligence_3868.html
(“The Chinese troops sent into Vietnam were poorly trained,equipped with obsolete weapons, and supplied with outdated ammunition. Many of their casualties came from friendly fire. Shells that did hit their targets often didn't explode. Instead of reaching Hanoi in a few days, as was expected, the invaders bogged down in the border city of Lang Son. The Chinese generals became so frustrated with resistance in Lang Son that after the city was taken they summoned the senior class from the Army engineering school in Nanjing and ordered them to destroy every
building in the city. ‘It was our goodbye kiss to Vietnam,’ said one of the returning officers. ‘All we left behind was mud and blood.’ After the Chinese abandoned the city, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong visited Lang Son. When he saw the total destruction of the city, the prime minister wept. When they learned of this, the commanders of the occupying army [China] announced the news to their men and let it be know that they were especially pleased with the work they had done in Lang Son”)

(d) “The Chinese soldiers were instructed to be merciless and resorted to a ‘frenzy of extreme emotions,” according to a former Chinese intelligence officer, Xu Meihong 徐美红, who immigrated to the United States and whose account appears in a history of the war, ‘Chinese Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War’ by Edward C O’Dowd.

Edward C O’Dowd, Chinese Military Strategy in the Third Indochina War; The last Maoist war. Routledge, 2007.