The Butcher of Beijing

A diary allegedly written by Li Peng during the Tiananmen protests in Beijing, June 1989, is about to be published in Hong Kong. Li Peng was China’s premier at the time of the massacre, thus earning himself the nickname ‘Butcher of Beijing’. Excerpts of the publication have been circulating on the internet and have led commentators to suggest the diary will do little to help Li Peng, currently very ill, shed that moniker.

When student-led protests threatened to escalate out of control in central Beijing in late May and early June 1989, the Chinese government was divided as to how to respond. The premier Li Peng favoured military force. He had taken over the premiership from Zhao Ziyang in 1987 (and continued in office until 1998). The still powerful General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, however, took a more dovish approach and showed some support for the demonstrators. Li Peng’s view prevailed, Zhao Ziyang’s political stock sank further, and upwards of 3,000 people may have been killed.

There was international outrage at the time; and a scar still remains today in the sense that many people round the world only know the name Tiananmen Square because of the massacre. (The outrage in 1989, however, did not last long enough to stop China being awarded the 2008 Olympic Games in 2001.) See Wikipedia for more on Li Peng and the Tiananmen Square protests.

The Hong Kong-based New Century Press is set to publish, later in June, a diary kept by Li Peng at the time of the protests. Excerpts of the diary, which most commentators believe is genuine, have been circulating on the internet, and were picked up by the press agency AFP (as reported by Sinchew.com). On 1 June, Li Peng writes: ‘The unrest now in Beijing is the biggest chaos since the nation was established’; and ‘The loss of control in this situation has gone beyond the Great Cultural Revolution’. While attempting to mediate a political solution to end the protests, Li Peng reveals in the diary, he is massing 25,000 troops in buildings around the square - ‘a force surrounding Tiananmen on all four sides’.

A BBC article also provides some quotes: ‘From the beginning of the turmoil, I have prepared for the worst, . . . I would rather sacrifice my own life and that of my family to prevent China from going through a tragedy like the Cultural Revolution.’

The man behind the publishing project, Bao Pu, of New Century Press, is a prominent human rights activist, and the son of Bao Tong, a senior advisor to the head of the Chinese Communist Party at the time of the Tiananmen protests. He told AFP that the diaries show ‘Li participated in the decision-making throughout the process and he was also the one who carried out these decisions. This all came out very, very clear in details that we previously did not know.’

The BBC quotes Bao Pu as saying the diary ‘provides amazing details of how decisions were made and how the order was carried out, and how the leaders reached internal consensus’; and that ‘these are the kind of things that are not in official records’.

According to the South China Morning Post, Li Peng’s diary (15 April to 24 June 1989) was ready for publication in 2004, but the move was blocked by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. Originally entitled The Critical Moment, it has now been renamed Li Peng’s June 4 Diary, and will be released on 22 June.

Postscript: Three days before publication in Hong Kong the book was blocked; however, subsequently it was published in the US under the title, The Critical Moment. 

Red Lacquer Days

‘Myself, the architect, duffle-coated, sharp-nosed, straggly-haired.’ Thus did Hugh Casson, the influential British architect and writer, describe himself in a diary written during a cultural tour behind the ‘iron curtain’, to China in the 1950s. That diary - Red Lacquer Days - was published in a limited edition of 200, but Casson returned to the diary form 25 years later when President of the Royal Academy. Today, his centenary, is the time to remember that duffle-coated, sharp-nosed architect.

Casson was born on 23 May 1910 and spent some time in Burma, where his father worked for the Indian Civil Service, before being sent home, because of the impending war, to his maternal grandparents in Kent. His uncle was the actor Sir Lewis Casson (married to Sybil Thorndyke). Hugh was sent to boarding school at Eastbourne, East Sussex, and later studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, and the Bartlett School of Architecture, London. Thereafter he taught at the Cambridge School of Architecture and practised in the firm run by his Cambridge tutor Christopher Nicholson.

During the Second World War, he served with the Air Ministry working on camouflage, and after he worked as director of architecture for the Festival of Britain, and he went into partnership with Neville Conder. Together their firm designed many projects, including university campuses, the Elephant House at London Zoo, and Cambridge University’s Sidgwick Avenue arts faculty. Casson was knighted in 1952.

Apart from his talents as an architect, Casson was considered to be an outstanding writer and speaker. He also designed sets for the theatre and opera. During his later life, he held various high-level appointments, such as provost of the Royal College of Art and President of the Royal Academy. As a friend of the British royal family, he designed the interior of the royal yacht Britannia. For a while in the 1980s, he became a television presenter, with his own show Personal Pleasures with Sir Hugh Casson. He died in 1999; and his wife, the photographer Margaret Macdonald, died three months later. A little more biographical information is available at Wikipedia, or the Sir Hugh Casson official website, or from various obituaries (The Independent, The New York Times).

Casson is not known as a diarist, but two of his short-lived diary writing episodes, a quarter of a century apart, have been published. The first in 1956 by Lion and Unicorn Press in a limited edition of 200 had silk covered boards and was called Red Lacquer Days: an illustrated journal describing a recent visit to Peking. Copies are available on Abebooks for as little as £20. The second - Hugh Casson Diary - was published by Macmillan in 1981 and described Casson’s fourth year as President of the Royal Academy. Like Red Lacquer Days, it too is liberally illustrated with line drawings and watercolours.

Here are a few extracts from Red Lacquer Days, including the start of the first and the end of the last.

14 September 1954
‘Are you the cultural delegation?’ The flight clerk at London Airport looks up from his papers. ‘Mind you, I am only guessing.’ What else indeed could we be? Culture is written all over us. . .’

[Casson then describes the other members of the delegation naming them by their profession, a geologist, a poet, a painter, a philosopher.]

‘Myself, the architect, duffle-coated, sharp-nosed, straggly-haired.’

‘None of us, I’m sure, is certain of any motive for going except that of curiosity. We are all aware that a guest - even at the house of his dearest friend - is always a prisoner and that beyond the Iron Curtain there are no bystanders - only players, and that even a decision not to play is a commitment in itself. Yet none of us hesitated to accept the invitation - who indeed would have?’

25 September - 27 September 1954
‘In lovely weather - warm sun, cold breeze, clear blue days and Mediterranean nights - the week passes crammed with sightseeing. At our request we eschew factories and clinics, mines and blast-furnaces. For us, day after day, are spread out the delights of temples and gardens, of palaces and lakes, of secret courtyards and absurd pavilions with delicious elegant names: ‘The Palace of Pleasant Sounds’, ‘The Studio of Pure Fragrance’, ‘The Hall of Last Virtue’, ‘The Pavilion for Watching the Spring’. All are beautifully kept, affectionately restored, crowded with visitors - soldiers strolling with linked fingers, old ladies tottering on misshapen feet, pale-faced Europeans hung with light-meters and scribbling in notebooks, parties of school-children in scarlet scarves.

There can be few more visually exciting experiences than to wander through the courts of the Forbidden City as though through the rooms of some vast roofless mansion. First the great approach, paved and straight, that even within living memory was lined every day at dawn by kneeling elephants who guarded the approach of Court officials and mandarins. . . Then through the Great Gateway with the court yards set about with halls of state designed for splendid ceremonials. Each hall is surrounded with smaller halls and pavilions, with terraces, bridges, staircases and ramps all in marching, rhythmic perspective. Every column, every roof, every silhouette and every colour is the same - yet all are different because each time they are viewed from a slightly different aspect or different level. Courts give way to temples, to stairways, to courts again. Everywhere roofs are golden, ceilings blue, green and gold, walls and columns blood-red. The floors inside and out are carefully paved, great marble slabs, diagonally tooled along the main pathways - elsewhere grey rectangular bricks or stones. Balustrades are of white marble, richly carved. Great bronze vessels as high as your hat stand sentinel beneath trees every branch of which has been studied and, if necessary, twisted in growth to create the required effect. Within the State rooms are set out the furniture, the silks, the bronzes and porcelains that once belonged to the Imperial Court - some beautiful, some strangely hideous - carved monkeys made out of what looks like chocolate spaghetti; cranes in coloured cloisonné; clocks let into the bellies of elephants. Owing to the risk of fire, buildings are not fitted with electric lighting, and in the scarlet twilight of these great halls the atmosphere is sinister and smells of tyranny.

But once outside in the gardens and grottoes of the surrounding parks the magic returns . . .’

‘Day after delightful day we stroll along beautifully patterned pathways past the agonised rocks and twisted cypresses of the Winter Palace where an old man, white-masked against the dust, sits silently appraising the goldfish. We descend through a dark twisted cave in the Peilhai Park to reach a canopied ferry in which we are carried across a lake to the Emperor’s fishing pavilion. We drink tea in the shade of the Temple of Heaven, eat a picnic lunch among the yet unrestored ruins of the Summer Palace, doze in the sun beside the hulk of the old iron steam yacht (a present from the Emperor of Japan to the Dowager Empress of China) that lies mildewing and desolate upon a marble quay. We watch butterflies by silent pools, and listen to magpies in the bamboo groves. We are taken to see Mr Ching Chin-yi, who, in the shade of a little pavilion, is busy engraving the Stockholm Peace Appeal upon a grain of rice. . .’

16 October
‘. . . we drop through sopping clouds into London Airport. No reception committee, no brass bands, no blandly smiling hosts, not even grudging respect for having got there and back. Great distances, strange passport stamps, exotic labels mean nothing here. The journey is over, the delegation vowing constant friendship to be cemented by regular meetings - (I’m in the [telephone] book’) - disintegrates instantly into individuality, each with his own private English life, and vanishes into London.’

Ricci the sinologist

Matteo Ricci, a pioneering Italian sinologist, died four hundred years ago today. He was one of the first Jesuit missionaries to be allowed into China, and never returned to Europe. He wrote several important books in Chinese and composed a now famous map of the world. However, his most important legacy, at least in the West, may be the manuscript he wrote in Italian, which was translated soon after into Latin, but not into English until more than 300 years later: China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matteo Ricci.

Matteo (or Matthew in English) Ricci was born in 1552 of a noble family in Macerata, then part of the Papal States but today a city in central Italy, 130 km east of Perugia. Aged 16, he went to Rome to study law but soon decided on joining the Jesuits. The Jesuits had only been given Papal legitimacy some 30 years earlier, but were already making a name for themselves in scientific research and with voyages to the New World.

In 1577, Ricci set out for Lisbon where he continued his studies while waiting for a ship to the East. He arrived in Goa in 1578, and stayed on the west coast of India for several years (he was ordained in Cochin in 1580) before being ordered to China in 1582. Once in the Portuguese province of Macau, Ricci started learning the Chinese language and Chinese customs - the Jesuits having recently decided on a strategy of adopting local customs.

In 1583, Ricci and Michele Ruggieri, another Jesuit priest now considered to be the first European sinologist, were given permission to settle in Zhaoqing, then the capital of Kwangtun province. Within the next few years, Ruggieri is credited with publishing the first Catholic catechism in Chinese, and Ricci is credited with producing the first edition of his Map of the Myriad Countries of the World, sometimes now called The Black Tulip of Cartography, because of its rarity, importance and exoticism. Together, Ricci and Ruggieri are also credited with compiling a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary, for which they developed a consistent system of transcribing Chinese words in the Latin alphabet.

Ruggieri returned to Italy in 1588, leaving Ricci in charge of the Jesuit mission in China. He was expelled from Zhaoqing in 1589, but relocated in Shaoguan. Further travels took him to Nanchang (1595-1598), where he became a friend of two princes of royal blood and wrote his first book in Chinese (On Friendship), and to Nanking (1599-1601) where he was engaged mostly in the study of astronomy and mathematics. In 1601, he won permission to settle in Beijing, where he remained until his death on 11 May 1610 - exactly 400 years ago today - teaching science, preaching the gospel, and writing several more books in Chinese. For further biographical information see Wikipedia, the Catholic Encyclopaedia, or Prof Joseph MacDonnell’s website at Fairfield University.

However, Ricci’s most important and enduring book, written in Italian, was based on his journals and entitled De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas suscepta ab Societate Jesu (About Christian expeditions to China undertaken by the Society of Jesus). It was expanded and translated into Latin by Nicolas Trigault, and first published in 1615. A well-referenced Wikipedia article provides good details of the book’s history. It explains that excerpts first appeared in English in Purchas his Pilgrimes in 1625, but a complete English translation of the Latin text (by the Jesuit Louis J Gallagher) was not published until 1942. It was reprinted by Random House ten years later as China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matteo Ricci.

At the time, Kenneth Roxroth, writing in The New Republic, said: ‘It is not often that a classic, previously unknown to the world at large, appears on the book market. The only other example I can think of nowadays is the publication of the Boswell manuscripts. Matteo Ricci was of course a much greater man and occupied a much more important place in history, and was at least as interesting a writer. I am inclined to agree with the publishers that this is one of the most important books they have ever issued.’ (This review can be found online at the Bureau of Public Secrets.)

A little more from that review: ‘The best sinologists were the early Jesuits, and their Latin translations of the Chinese classics are still at least the equal of anything produced in the succeeding 300 years. They completely merged themselves with the Chinese; in fact they became Chinese literati, with considerable personal influence on the Emperor. They introduced Western science and philosophy to the Orient and Chinese culture to the Occident with such success that the eighteenth century was the century of chinoiserie. Even the Chinese Communists still respect Ricci as the greatest and least predatory of the culture-bearers from the West.’

Here are two extracts from the book (although not in diary form) as found in a pdf available on the Columbia Centre for Teaching and Learning website

‘The Chinese can distinguish between their magistrates by the parasols they use as protection against the sun when they go out in public. Some of these are blue and others yellow. Sometimes for effect they will have two or three of these sunshades, but only one if their rank does not permit of more. They may also be recognized by their mode of transportation in public. The lower ranks ride on horseback, the higher are carried about on the shoulders of their servants in gestatorial chairs. The number of carriers also has significance of rank; some are only allowed four, others may have eight. There are other ways also of distinguishing the magistracy and the rank of dignity therein; by banners and pennants, chains and censer cups, and by the number of guards who give orders to make way for the passage of the dignitary. The escort itself is held in such high esteem by the public that no one would question their orders. Even in crowded city everyone gives way at the sound of their voices with a spontaneity that correspond to the rank of the approaching celebrity. . .’

‘Another remarkable fact and quite worthy of note as marking a difference from the West, is that the entire kingdom is administered by the Order of the Learned, commonly known as The Philosophers. The responsibility for the orderly management of the entire realm is wholly and completely committed to their charge and care. The army, both officers and soldiers, hold them in high respect and show them the promptest obedience and deference, and not infrequently the military are disciplined by them as a schoolboy might be punished by his master. Policies of war are formulated and military; questions are decided by the Philosophers only, and their advice and counsel has more weight with the King than that of the military leaders. In fact very few of these and only on rare occasions, are admitted to war consultations. Hence it follows that those who aspire to be cultured frown upon war and would prefer the lowest rank in the philosophical order to the highest in the military, realizing that the Philosophers far excel military leaders in the good will and the respect of the people and in opportunities of acquiring wealth.’

. . . and 50,000 yuan

‘The year 2007 is over. . . I finally got some women.’ So confided Han Feng, a Chinese tobacco company official, to his personal diary. But, in the last few weeks, this diary has become the centre of a rather juicy news story. Han, it seems, was suspended from his job, pending an investigation into allegations about his debauchery and his taking of bribes - allegations which were sourced somehow from Han’s diary and leaked onto the internet. Meanwhile, Han has asked local police to arrest whoever was responsible for leaking the information and to charge them with an invasion of privacy.

Having been promoted in 2009, Han was employed as director of sales for the Guangxi tobacco monopoly bureau - until, that is, he was suspended at the beginning of March, pending an investigation by the bureau’s discipline inspection committee. The investigation, according to China Daily, quoted by AFP, followed accusations of corruption, a lavish lifestyle and improper relations with female employees. These accusations, it explained, stemmed from extracts of Han’s diaries that had been posted on the internet by a man wanting revenge for an affair Han had had with his wife.

The same AFP report says that during a year-long period up to January 2008, Han’s diary describes: ‘regular feasts and excessive drinking five days a week, usually with police, local government officials and tobacco company directors’; receiving ‘payments ranging from 2,000 yuan [$300] to 100,000 yuan’; and ‘sexual relationships with five female colleagues’. AFP also notes that China’s ruling party has railed against corruption for years, seeking to counter public anger over regular reports of graft, excess and debauchery among officials, and that this case marks the latest instance of an official being investigated following revelations on the internet

Times Online picked up the story, which opens as follows: ‘Most officials in trouble for corruption in China do their best to cover their tracks. Han Feng, however, wrote a diary that provided police investigators with a first-hand account of his misdemeanours. His Twitter-style, almost daily diary entries over a two-year period recount his sexual dalliances and the cash gifts that he received, and have caused a sensation since they were leaked on to the internet last month - prompting an official inquiry into his activities. Mr Han’s boasts about his sexual conquests and frequent enjoyment of banquets, karaoke and heavy drinking is an embarrassment for the leadership on the eve of the annual session of Parliament, where the need to stamp out corruption is likely to be high on the agenda.’

The most thorough and up-to-date news on this story in English, however, can be found at Global Times (a newish Chinese newspaper which says it ‘particularly focuses on expressing Chinese people’s real feelings, sharing their opinions and standpoints on significant international issues and promoting their understanding of the global views on China’). According to Global Times, which quotes the Sichuan-based Chengdu Business Daily, Han has now asked the police to track down the person who released the diary to the internet and charge the hacker with legal liabilities. A preliminary investigation, according to Beijing Times, has shown that the diary was leaked through Han’s computer.

Wikipedia has a brief bio of Han Feng, ChinaSmack has some photos, while EastSouthWestNorth has a very comprehensive report on the story, as well as a full list of the published diary entries translated into English. Here are some.

16 September 2007
‘Sha went shopping in the morning. Wang asked me for lunch at the Guijing Hotel. There were just the two of us. He gave me two bottles of Moutai liquor and 50,000 yuan. I deposited 30,000 yuan and took 20,000 home.’

18 September 2007
‘Stayed at the dormitory during the morning. Went to Guoda Hotel and got a room in the hotel. Went back to the office. Yong Rixian and others came. They are taking the test to become commissioners tomorrow. Drank a lot of red wine with them that evening. Returned to Guoda Hotel after 11am. Xiao Tan was already there. Her menstrual period was here, so she used her mouth on me.’

19 September 2007
‘Stayed at the dormitory during the morning. At noon, Hong He, Anhui, Li Yuefen and others came. Had lunch with them. Drank a lot of liquor. Slept during the afternoon. Went to Guoda Hotel in the evening. Xiao Tan did it with me with her mouth. I ejaculated.’

15 November 2007
‘After breakfast, Mo Kun accompanied us to see the ‘Upper/Lower Nine’. It is still quite well-preserved without a lot of changes. I stayed in the hotel room in the afternoon. Went out to eat in the evening and went back to the room. Ah Fang came to my room to fuck. After fucking five times, she returned to her own room.’

4 December 2007
‘I rested in the morning. At lunch, the Yinzhou court’s Zhao Xin and his colleagues asked me to lunch. I went with Xiao Pan. We drank until 4pm. I drank too much, and so did Xiao Pan. I asked her to come to my room where I fucked her. I seemed to remember that it was very heated and she cooperated with what seemed to be a lot of juice. In the evening, Xiao Pan and Ah Mei asked me to have a late night snack. We ate for a while and we told Tan Gang to come to drink another two bottles of foreign wine. Drank too much once again.’

11 December 2007
‘Economic operations analysis meeting all day. Had dinner Huang Guiting and director Xiao of the Land Department. We fixed our entry fee at 5 million yuan in order to guarantee that we get the land. Drank a lot once again.’

31 December 2007
‘I went with Sha to Xinmeng in the morning. Even more activities were going on. Bought two electric blankets. Ate lunch and came home. Spent the afternoon at home. The year 2007 is over. This is the year in which my work has gone the smoothest ever. The company is growing. The middle-level cadres have worked hard to understand my goals. My authority has grown among the workers. All our missions were accomplished. My income was as much as 200,000 yuan. Next year will be easier. Therefore, I don't care whether I go back to the district bureau. I hope that I can work another couple of years and then return for an easier job at the district bureau. This year, my son has done well and he is being recommended to be a graduate student without even having to take any test. Two years later, he will get a job easily. My photography skills have reached another higher stage, and I will try to keep learning until I grow old. I finally got some women. I hooked up with Xiao Pan. I have fun with Tan Shanfang regularly. I also have fun with Mo Yaodai. I have luck with women this year. But when there are too many women, I have to watch my body health.’

Large idols are carved

It is the bicentenary today of the birth of William Griffith, one of the most fanatical of 19th century botanical explorers. Although he died young, he described and collected an astonishingly large number of Asian species. He was also fanatical about recording every detail of his explorations: his diaries, though apparently rather dry, provide a hypnotic and fabulous insight into regions that even today retain an aura of being strange and unknown. As an example, I have chosen extracts from his diary for the first three days of September 1839, when Griffith is travelling through central Afghanistan into the Bamean Valley with its caves and statues of Buddha.

Griffith was born on 4 March 1810 - two centuries ago today - at Kingston-upon-Thames near London. He studied medicine at London University, but, under the guidance of Sir John Lindley (famous for his research on orchids) he also became a distinguished student of botany. In 1832, he sailed to Madras, India, to take up an appointment as assistant-surgeon for the East India Company; and in 1835, he was attached to the Bengal Presidency and sent with a group of experts to explore the so-called tea-forests of Assam. This was the first of many such expeditions for Griffith whose quest for botanical knowledge took him to every corner of the East India Company’s extra-peninsular possessions.

In 1841, he was appointed surgeon in Malacca, but the following year he was appointed as acting director of the Calcutta Botanical Gardens. That position lasted two years before, in 1844, he returned to his duties in Malacca. That same year he married Miss Henderson, the sister of his brother’s wife. Unfortunately, early the following year and while still in his mid-30s, he died from a liver disease. He bequeathed his collection to the East India Company, which was then sent to England, where it is still held by Kew Gardens. According to The Beauty of Orchids & Flowers website ‘no Botanist ever collected and described so many species like Griffith. His collection comprises about 12,000 plants.’ Futher information is available from Wikipedia.

What Griffith also did in great detail is write about his travels, in letters and in diaries. Some of these were arranged by John M’Clelland in Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The Neighbouring Countries and published in 1847 - the full text is available at Project Gutenberg. The basic text (more or less as provided by Project Gutenberg) was printed in paperback by Hard Press - see Amazon.com - quite recently.

Here are extracts from three days at the beginning of September 1839 when Griffith is travelling through central Afghanistan and into the Bamean Valley.

1 September 1839
‘After re-crossing Hajeeguk we continued our march to Sohkta, five and a half miles. The road continued along a considerable descent throughout, at first down the valley in which we had halted to the west, thence down the large Kulloo valley in a northerly direction; towards the mouth of first ravine or valley it is bad, passing across a land slip, then it crosses the bed of a huge torrent falling at a great rate, and obstructed with boulders; the right bank, a high almost precipitous mountain, the left a high aggregate of granitic and other boulders. Water abundant, divided into three streams or so: this torrent comes direct from the nearest portion of Kohi-Baba, which appears of easy descent, presenting beautiful peaks. The road then keeps along left bank, undulating over the ravines, down which water flows from the hills on the eastern side; some of these are very steep, and the road itself is infamous, as may be supposed, crowded with boulders, and impracticable for wheeled carriages: one precipitous ravine we passed through, the rocks consisted of blackish, curiously laminated, and metallic looking stone. On descending one steep ravine, we then came on the road leading up to the Kulloo mountain, where we halted.

A good many villages, with forts, as usual were passed; the cultivation more advanced than at our last halt, crops consisting chiefly of barley. One good fort was observed close to our halting place opposite the direction of the small Kulloo ravine; across the valley a well marked road is seen running up a part of Kulloo ridge, at a lower elevation than that which we crossed.

Poplars and willows occur in the large valley, particularly towards Sohkta, a small orchard of stunted mulberry trees. Cultivation consisting of peas; barley of fine grain, resembling wheat when freed from the husk.

The plants of the valley of Kulloo were badly observed, as I was greatly tired and fatigued. Polygonum fruticosum re-occurs, Silene, Clematis erecta, Tragogopon, Salvia but less common, a curious Cruciferous plant, Lactucacea purpurea of Cabul, Chenopodium villosum fæmin. Dianthus, Saponaria, Lychnis inflata, oats common in fields, the common thistle, Urtica, Caragana abundant along the bed of the river, Papaver. On rocks about camp, 2 Salsolæ, Glaucum, Umbelliferæ of the Yonutt ravine, Artemisiæ, Rosa Ribes! Scrophularia alia.

The valley is very narrow at camp, the river running between precipices, in some parts passable without wetting the feet.’

2 September 1839
‘From Sohkta Kullar-Rood to Topehee, eight and a half miles. The road lay in a northerly direction for a quarter of a mile, then turning up a steep ravine, with an ascent for 800 feet; then small descent, then levellish, until we came to a black cliff, over which another steeper but longer ascent extended, then it became levellish for some distance; two other moderate, extended, longish ascents, led us to the summit, which is 500 feet higher than that of Hajeeguk. The descent continued steep and most tedious on reaching the precipitous ravine of Topehee, the road wound over small spurs, until we came to a grove of willows near the village. The road although steep is not bad, the soil being soft, that of the upper parts and of the descent, even annoying from the sand, both might with little trouble be made easy, but especially the descent. . .

The camels all came up but one, though very slowly; to them as to us, the descent was more tiring than the ascent.

From the summit a fine view of Kohi-Baba was obtained, running to NW by N. To the NE, another high range, but not so marked as Kohi-Baba, was seen running in a similar direction; on this, two considerable peaks present themselves, but only visible when lower down.

A splendid view of the Bamean valley is here obtained [Google maps for a modern satellite view]. We have now obviously passed the highest ranges: to west where the country is low and flat; to the north, the mountains indistinctly visible, are beautifully varied, presenting rugged outlines 10,000 feet above Bamean, also a view of an unearthly looking mountain, most variedly sculptured, is obtained, with here and there rich ravines and columnar sided valleys, presenting tints very varied; in those of the lower ranges, rich rosy tints are predominant; also niches in which gigantic idols are plainly seen: also a view of Goolghoolla, looking as it is in reality, a ruined city: a fine gorge apparently beyond the Bamean river, and a large ravine due north, by which I expect the Bamean river reaches the Oxus; not a tree is to be seen, except a few about Bamean. The whole view is indescribably volcanic, barren yet rich, requiring much colouring to convey an idea of it.

To the top of the pass it is three and a half miles; the character of Kulloo mountain is different from that above described, it is rounded, and composed of a curious compact slate, towards the summit well covered with plants, large tufts of Statice, two or three kinds, two undescribed; immense quantities of Artemisia, coarse tufted grasses, Onosma, Carduacea herbacea of Hajeeguk, uncommon; Triticoides 998, not common; Alium fusco purpurea common. A few exposed rocks occur on the summit. The ravines are all dry, there being no water or very little in them, and no cultivation; thus the contrast visible on both sides of the Kulloo river which runs round the foot of the mountain, is remarkable. Vegetation being distinct on either side.

Yet the ravine of Topehee shows, that when exposed to the action of water, this rock becomes very precipitous, cliffy, easily dislocated: the latter part of the road winds over a portion of this. Chakor, Ptarmigan a fine bird, voice somewhat like that of a vulture, to which it is perhaps anologous.

About Sohkta or in ravines, Euphorbia linearifolia, Ephedra, Asteroides, Rosa Ribes, Composita dislocata, Artemisiæ, Aster pyramidalis, Chenopodium villosum fæm., Senecionoides [long list of plants]. . .

Not much change beyond 12,000 feet, at that height Glaucium in abundance, with a few Hyoscyamus parvus, Borago [list of plants]. . .

The same vegetation continues down to Topehee; on the red hills over its ravine, the plants are different. [List of plants]’

3 September 1839
‘We proceeded from Topehee to Bamean, a distance of twelve miles, for two and a half miles down Topehee ravine. The road is a decent descent, although steepish: from thence turning abruptly at the Bamean valley, we cross the river, which is of considerable size, but fordable, although rapid. The road then extends along the left bank, not in the valley which is occupied by cultivation, but winding over and round the bases of low hills and cliffs, forming a northern boundary; throughout this part the road is villainous, often impeded by huge blocks. After a distance of about ten miles it improves, the valley expanding into a cultivated plain.

Topehee valley narrows towards its mouth or exit, which is walled in by high, red, raviny cliffs; above, in its upper parts it is well cultivated with beans, barley, wheat, and oats, and contains two villages: it opens into the Bamean valley at a village also called Topehee, there the Bamean valley is well cultivated, with oats intermixed with barley or wheat, trefoil, etc., it then narrows, forming the bed of a ravine occupied by Hippophæ, Tamarisk, etc., then it widens again.

The structure of the hills is curious, and generally exhibiting the appearance of having been much acted on by water. They are often cliffy, composed either of limestone or a soil of red clay, with which salt occurs in abundance, conspicuous from the white appearance, or springs. Crystals of carbonate of lime are frequent, limestone, or coarse conglomerate with large rounded stones, occurs; together with a curious laminated clayey rock, with white and ochraceous layers intermixed. The tints most various, as well as the sculpture of the mountains: here ravines representing tracery occur: there, columnar curiously carved cliffs, exhibiting all sorts of fantastic forms: here, as it were, a hill thrown down with numberless blocks into the stream, scattered in every direction; and here, but this is rare, very red horizontal strata, colours various, generally rosy, especially the clayey cliffs: here and there the colour of the rock is ochraceous, at one place its structure is slaty. The curious intermixture of these colours owing to the weather, is striking.

From the head of two of the ravines by which considerable torrents flow into Bamean river, beautiful views are obtained of the Kohi-Baba, whose peaks according to native authority, stretch sixty miles to the westward of Bamean, without much diminution in height. The scenery, however, is less beautiful after emerging into the widened part of the valley, where the hills are less varied both in form and tints, than they are in lower parts: fine views however of Kohi-Baba are occasionally had.

Salsolæ are the prevailing plants of the rocky sides of the valley, Clematis erecta common, here and there a small Statice.

Caves occur throughout the wide portion of the valley, but chiefly on the northern side; they also extend a little way into the narrow portion, where they seem to be excavated into clayey-looking, red, earthy limestone, or more commonly conglomerate, of coarse grey, or reddish colour.

The caves are most common in two cliffs composed of conglomerate mixed with transverse strata of the same rock, 3,400 feet high, presenting a rugged outline; and between the two, which are 800 yards apart, large idols are carved. These cliffs in some places have suffered little from the action of the elements, as testified by the perfect nature of the opening of the caves, and the corners, etc. of the niches enclosing idols; in others they are furrowed by the action of water; in others again slips have taken place to such extent in some, as to cause the fall of all their caves, or of their greater portion, thus exposing the galleries, etc.

The base of the cliffs is irregular, formed of the same conglomerate and clay, but covered more or less by boulders, evidently brought down by the river; by these many caves are choked up, so that originally the cliff might have been perpendicular to the edge of the base, and if so, the caves in the cliffs, and the idols, are of later date than those of the rugged base. But more probably the cliffs, and the caves, are much as they were originally, the boulders having been a subsequent deposit.

The western corner of the cliff beyond the large idol, is much destroyed; on this, the force of the current would have acted: a breakwater occurring along the returning face.

The caves are very numerous, but are confined chiefly towards the base of the cliffs . . . These are of no size, finish, or elegance, and it is only their number, and the extreme obscurity of their history, that makes them interesting; the roofs are usually arched, and the walls are often supplied with niches, and covered with a coating of tar of some thickness, and intense blackness. The galleries are low, arched, and admit one person at a time, or a line of persons with ease; they often form the ascent to the upper caves now inhabited, but originally they were enclosed in the rock, they are defended in such cases by a parapet.

The largest caves are those about the idols, but I see none of any size. They are often domed, the spring of the dome is ornamented with a projecting frieze, some of these are parallelogramic, in one instance with an ornamented border thus.

Some of the caves are situated as high as, or even above the tops of the idols; all parts within the rock are lighted by small apertures.

Access to the large idol is destroyed; the smaller one is gained by a spiral staircase of rude construction, and by galleries. The floor of the galleries is rugged, the steps and the cement of the conglomerate having worn out from between the masses of rock. The images all occupy niches in the face of the hill: two are gigantic, the rest not very large. They are generally in the usual sitting posture, and rather high up, while the larger ones are erect, and reach the base of the cliffy portion of the rock. They are all male, and all obviously Boodhistical; witness the breadth, proportion, and shape of the head, and the drapery; both are damaged, but the smaller is the more perfect, the face of the large one being removed above the lower lip; the arms are broken off, showing they were occupied by galleries. The drapery is composed of plaster, and was fixed on by bolts which have fallen out, leaving the holes. The arms in the smaller one are supported by the falling drapery. The height of the large image in the niche is 135 feet.

The pictures are much damaged, the plaster on which they were painted being mostly very deficient, all the faces are damaged by bullets or other missiles: their execution is indifferent, not superior to modern Burmese paintings; the colours however are good, the figures are either grouped or single, and one is in the style of the time of Henry VIII, with a hat and plume, others represent groups flying - one a golden bird, another a man with a hemispherical helmet, all are much damaged. The hair in some is dressed as in the modern Burmese top-knot, often surrounded by a circle.

Otherwise the niches are not ornamented, except in one instance, as above alluded to; the head of the smaller figure was formerly covered by the roof, as evident from holes or troughs for timbers in the gallery. These holes are now inhabited by pigeons, and the lower ones by cows, donkeys, fowls, kids, dogs; some are filthy apertures blocked up by stone and mud walls; the doors irregular, and guarded between two giants.

An old tope occurs near some small figures, it is composed of stones very much disintegrated, with curious blocks of kucha work, and large Babylonish bricks; the smaller figures are much destroyed, some completely; all are in alto-relievo.

The plants about Topehee valley, are Cichorium, Centaurea lutea, [long list of plants] . . .’

Chiang Kai-shek’s diaries

It is sixty years to the day that the Republic of China (ROC), having been defeated by the Communist Party in the country’s civil war, relocated to Taiwan. To celebrate the event, Academia Historica, home to Taiwan’s national archives, is presenting an exhibition based on the 1949 diary of Chiang Kai-shek, the ROC’s leader for many years. The original of that diary, and indeed a lifetime of diaries kept by Chiang, are housed in the US, at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, copies of which have only recently been made available for public inspection under stringent conditions.

Chiang Kai-shek was born in 1887 in a place called Xikou which lies roughly 100 miles south of Shanghai and 300 miles directly north of Taipei. His father was a salt merchant, though he died while Chiang was only eight. An arranged marriage followed, and two children. Chiang trained for a military career, partly in Japan, where he served in the imperial army from 1909 to 1911. On returning to China, he took part in various revolutionary activities, until, in 1918, he joined Sun Yat-sen’s Kuomintang, or Chinese Nationalist Party, which was trying to overthrow the warlords and unify the country.

Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, leaving something of a power vacuum, but the following year Chiang won control of the revolutionary forces, and continued the campaign against the warlords. However, he had to fight a bloody battle against a Communist wing within the Kuomintang - involving the murder of thousands - before marching into Peking in 1928 and establishing a new central government. To further consolidate his power base, he married Soong May-ling, the sister of Sun Yat-sen’s widow, but first he had to convert to Christianity, and divorce his wife and concubines, because of the demands by Soong’s parents. Chiang’s government made many advances in the subsequent decade - economic, social, industrial - but was constantly harried by surviving warlords and the ousted Communists.

From 1937, and during the Second World War, Chiang’s resources were focused on repelling and stemming a Japanese invasion. With the help of the Allies, Japan eventually surrendered and withdrew from China. By then, however, Chiang’s rule was suffering badly from corruption and economic inflation, while the Communists, led by Mao Zedong, were growing in strength and influence. The US took a stand and suspended aid payments, but encouraged Chiang to negotiate with Mao Zedong. Wikipedia’s extensive biography of Chiang provides this note: ‘In his diary on June 1948, Chiang wrote that the Kuomintang had failed, not because of external enemies but because of disintegration and rot from within; and it was this, more than any alleged foreign intrigue, that contributed to his defeat.’

In the autumn of 1949, the ROC, defeated by the Communists, moved from mainland China to exile on Taiwan, and exactly sixty years ago today - on 7 November 1949 - its government resumed office there. However, it would be some months before Chiang himself made it to Taiwan and took up his duties as president. He was re-elected several times in subsequent decades, and remained leader of the ROC government in exile, formally claiming sovereignty over all of China, until his death in 1975. In the context of the Cold War, Wikipedia says, most of the Western world recognised this position, and the ROC represented China as a whole in the United Nations and other international organizations until the 1970s.

In memory of that day 60 years ago, Academia Historica is presenting an exhibition of Chiang Kai-shek’s 1949 diary, according to Taiwan Today, quoting from a story in China Times. The special exhibition - Critical 1949: President Chiang Kai-shek’s Resignation and Return - is running in conjunction with a documentary using material from microfilms of Chiang’s diary. The microfilms are in the care of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, Taiwan Today explains, where readers are only allowed to make handwritten copies, and therefore, their display in the exhibition and documentary is ‘especially valuable’. The documentary film crew, it adds, took a year going back and forth between mainland China, the US and Taiwan, consulting the diary and drawing on the Academia Historica’s files, as well as on films in the US National Archives and Records Administration. The Taiwan Today story gives one quote from Chiang’s diary, dated New Year’s Day 1949: ‘The enormity of the failures and ignominy of the past year has never been surpassed.’

In fact, Chiang wrote diaries for much of his life, and these are all held by the Hoover Institution. It divides them into four groups: Earliest Diaries, 1917–1931; World War II Diaries, 1932–1945; Postwar Diaries, 1946–1955; and Final Diaries, 1956–1972. But it also provides a detailed inventory of the diaries in pdf form, along with three pages of notes about them and their provenance. In particular, it notes that the diaries were given to the Institution by Elizabeth Chiang Fang Chih-yi, the wife of one of Chiang Kai-shek’s grandsons, and that the diaries will remain in the archives for 50 years ‘or until a permanent repository is found on the territory of China’.

The Journal of the Overseas Young Chinese Forum has an interesting article about the diaries, with many short quotes. It concludes: ‘What is the importance of Chiang Kai-shek’s diaries? This is a lively collection of papers. On August 25, 1929, he wrote: ‘my wife was suffering terribly after an abortion,’ fueling speculation of Chiang and Soong’s family life, for, by the time Chiang married Soong, he had contracted venereal disease and become sterile. In October 1933, when the central This article is a revised version of one first published 10 years ago on 16 November 2009. Communist activities, he ‘watched the moon with wife and sang Manjianghong [a Chinese tragic opera],’ a sensational moment quite different from the typical image of his seriousness and toughness. The diaries, therefore, provide scholars not only with details of major historic events but also insights into the ‘human element’ of history.’

Here is one quote included in the article, dated 14 October 1928: ‘I am so idle and self-indulgent that I have not been keeping my diaries for ten days! With such an unbridled and wanton attitude, how can I endeavor to wash away our national indignity and realize the success of the Chinese revolution?’

The Hoover Institution has kept Chiang’s diaries carefully archived, and only opened them to the public in stages. The Earliest Diaries were opened for inspection in March 2006, and since then one new group of the diaries has been made available each year until the final set was opened last July. However, there are stringent conditions applying: ‘Before examining the paper copies of the diaries, users must sign an agreement stating that (1) quotations from the diaries may not be published, broadcast, or redistributed in any form, without the written permission of the Chiang family, which retains copyright; (2) the diaries may not be photocopied nor photographed, so only handwritten notes may be taken; (3) cameras, cell phones, computers, scanners, and other image capture devices, as well as tape recorders and other recording devices, are not allowed while using the diaries; and (4) violations of the agreement may result in forfeiture of the privilege to access materials at the Hoover Institution Library and Archives.’

Believing in history

Kim Dae-jung, a former President of South Korea and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, died a few weeks ago, but in the last year of his life he kept a diary, and extracts have just been published. They are, in part, philosophical with reflections back over his life. However, some of the extracts are also proving controversial for being critical of the current administration led by President Lee Myung-bak.

Kim (his family name) was born in 1925 the son of a farmer. He studied at Mokpo Commercial High School and went to work for a Japanese-owned shipping company during the Japanese occupation of Korea. In time, he ended up as owner of the same firm. During the Korean War he managed to escape capture by the Communists, and subsequently went on to enter politics, being elected to the National Assembly for the first time in the early 1960s. By the mid-1960s, he had become a prominent opposition politician. In 1971, he was chosen as presidential candidate for the New Democratic Party to run against the incumbent, Park Chung Hee.

During the Assembly election campaign that followed the presidential vote, Kim experienced the first of at least five attempts on his life by political enemies. When the re-elected Park imposed martial law, Kim began a vigorous campaign against the measures. In August 1973, government agents abducted him from a Tokyo hotel. Intervention by the US saved his life, but he was still imprisoned, and then kept under house arrest. After Park’s assassination, Kim’s freedom was restored, only to be taken away again following a coup that brought Chun Doo-hwan to power. He was given exile to the US, where he taught at Harvard until his return to South Korea in 1985.

Back in Seoul, Kim was immediately put under house arrest but his return intensified a nationwide movement for democracy. In 1987, his civil and political rights were restored, leaving him free to run for office, which he did three times before being elected President, in 1997. He is credited with major reforms and restructuring, which helped pull the country back from a financial crisis, and for pursuing a policy of engagement toward North Korea (the Sunshine Policy). In 2000, Kim was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize ‘for his work for democracy and human rights in South Korea and in East Asia in general, and for peace and reconciliation with North Korea in particular.’

Kim completed his five year presidential term in 2003. He was succeeded first by Roh Moo-hyun, and then, in 2008, by the current President, Lee Myung-bak. Roh, however, committed suicide last May, and just three months months later, in August, Kim died too. There is more biographical information about him on the Nobel Peace Prize website, at Wikipedia, and in various recent obituaries, such as The Guardian’s.

Within days of Kim’s death, 30,000 copies of a small printed book entitled Insaengeun Areumdapgo Yeoksaneun Baljeonhanda (Life Is Beautiful and History Advances) were released. It contains a selection of diary entries from the last year of Kim’s life, starting in 2008 and ending in June 2009. A number of extracts are available online thanks to The Hankyoreh, a left-leaning South Korean newspaper.

In the journal, Hankyoreh notes, Kim ‘passionately’ expresses his rage against the unilateral behavior of the Lee Myung-bak administration, and shares his ‘concern and dismay over the state of democracy in South Korea and the extent to which inter-Korean relations is in crisis’. Also, as if sensing that he does not have long to live, he praises the beauty of life and expresses warm affection for his wife Lee Hee-ho. Here are a few extracts.

11 January 2009
‘I love and respect my wife, and without her, I might not be here now and even now, I think living without her would be difficult.’

20 January 2009 (the day police stormed a building to forcibly evicts tenants)
‘Because of the violent suppression of the police, five people are dead and an additional ten have been hospitalized with injuries. It is truly barbaric behavior.’

‘The situation of these poor citizens, who are being chased out of their homes in the cold winter, brings tears to my eyes.’

14/15 January 2009
‘The question in life is not how long you lived. It is whether you lived for people who are suffering and are faced with hardship.’

‘I have lived my life believing in history and the people even amid innumerable persecutions. In the future, I will continue to walk this same path for as long as I am alive.’

16 January 2009
‘All dictators in history think that they alone will not follow the same path as those previous if they prepare well enough, but in the end, they walk the same path or are subject to history’s harsh judgment.’

27 April 2009
‘What is there to hope for in this world? I will maintain my health until the end and to lend the counsel necessary for resolving the three major crises of the present: the crisis of democracy, the economic crisis of the working class, and the crisis in inter-Korean relations.’

23 May 2009 (the day Roh Moo-hyun died)
‘Prosecutors were too harsh in their investigation. They attacked him, his wife, his son, his older brother and his nephew-in-law as if they were cleaning house.’

29 May 2009
‘There has probably never been a case of nationwide mourning like this before. The people’s disappointment, rage and sadness about reality seems to overlap with President Roh’s.’

A few days ago, Chosun Ilbo (The Korean Daily) published an article about Kim’s diary (and a forthcoming memoir) chastising Kim himself for outspokenly attacking a current administration, and criticising those who seek to use the diary (and memoir) for political ends.

It says: ‘There lingers a sour suspicion that some will seek to take advantage of his diary. Some of the entries plainly criticize the Lee Myung-bak administration. Kim should have known better than anyone that it is unseemly for a former president to condemn one of his successors. The opposition seems to abuse the journal as if it was his political testament that he wanted them to pursue. And indeed, the diary clearly shows his unfailing conviction and trust in himself as a politician rather than self-doubt as a weak human being.’

But concludes: ‘Kim Dae-jung’s memoirs will be the first book in Korea a retired president wrote with posterity in mind. Recording stark truths may be important, but the book should show what kind of person Kim really was, since we know he was an eloquent and well-read man. Let us hope that his writings can be enjoyed in perpetuity for their own sake instead of being abused as a political bible by his supporters.’

Aurora Quezon’s bomb fuse

It is 60 years to the day that Aurora Quezon, the First Lady of the Philippines from 1935 to 1944, was assassinated en route to open a hospital dedicated to her husband, Manuel Quezon, the country’s first nationally-elected president, who had died of TB five years earlier. And this anniversary seems as good a reason as any to draw attention to The Philippine Diary Project, a freely accessible website with interesting historical material, not least about Aurora.

Wikipedia has a good biography of Aurora Quezon, as does a website run by Manuel L. Quezon III. She was born in 1888, in Baler Province (part of which was renamed Aurora Province in her honour). During the Philippine Revolution, which lasted until 1898, her father was imprisoned by the Spanish, and for a while she was taken in, and taught, by her aunt, Maria Dolores Molina, the mother of her future husband.

In 1911, she went to Manila to study teaching but suffered from poor health. Then, in 1918, she married her first cousin Manuel Luis Quezon. He had become the first President of the Philippine Senate two years earlier, and would remain in that position until 1935 when he was elected President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines. Aurora, meanwhile, involved herself with women’s organizations, such as the girl scouts, and was active in the campaign to give women the right to vote (achieved in 1937).

President Quezon was re-elected in November 1941, but the country was immediately beset with a crisis when Japan invaded the following month. The first couple evacuated, first to Corregidor, an island in Manila Bay, and then, in February, out of the country, making a long journey and only reaching the US in June. Manuel Quezon died of tuberculosis in 1944. Thereafter, Aurora moved to California for a year or so before returning to the Philippines in 1945. There she campaigned actively for Manuel Roxas, who became the first president of an independent Philippine Republic, and she helped launch and run the Philippine National Red Cross.

On 28 April 1949, 60 years ago today, Aurora Quezon was on her way to Baler to inaugurate the Quezon Memorial Hospital. She was travelling with her eldest daughter, Maria Aurora, and her son-in-law, Felipe Buencamino III, in a convoy of 13 vehicles. As they travelled along a mountain road, they were attacked by a group of armed men. All three of them were killed, along with another nine in the party, and ten of the assailants. It was widely believed that the Hukbalahap - the military arm of the Philippines communist party - were responsible. Wikipedia notes that while no Philippine President has ever been assassinated, Aurora Quezon is one of three presidential spouses to have been murdered.

When I first put Aurora Quezon’s name into Google looking for a diary connection, I really didn’t expect to find one. But The Philippine Diary Project emerged very quickly. I think it was set up by Manuel L. Quezon III about a year ago, although this information doesn’t seem to be available on the site itself. The aim of the site is ‘to make diaries of prominent individuals from Philippine history available to the general reader’. About 12 diarists feature on the site at present, some from unpublished works, and some from editions that were either limited, or are no longer in print. As much as possible, the site author says, the diaries are ‘either in the public domain or permission has been given to reproduce them here’.

Here are three entries on the website about Aurora Quezon, all taken from January 1942, just after the start of the Japanese invasion, when she and her husband were on the island of Corregidor. Two are taken from the diary of Felipe Buencamino III, and one from the diary of Diary of General Basilio Valdes, chief of staff of the Philippine Army during the war.

2 January 1942 - Diary of General Basilio Valdes
‘After luncheon the President, Mrs. Quezon and their children were seated in the hospital tunnel [Malinta Tunnel, Corregidor], between laterals 11 & 9 where we were lodged. Two bombs fell on the hill on top of the tunnel, one of them near the main entrance. The whole mountain shook. Suddenly a terrific explosion was heard. A bomb had fallen 20 yards from the kitchen exit of the hospital tunnel. The lights were extinguished as a bomb had hit a generator. As the noise of the explosion was heard, simultaneously with the extinguishing of the lights, someone ordered aloud “everybody lie on the floor”. I did not do it as I thought it was absurd and ridiculous. I went to lateral 11 to get my flashlight from my bed and when I entered it I found the High Commissioner, Mrs. Sayre and his assistants lying on the cement floor. Someone turned on a flashlight. I saw the President, holding Mrs. Quezon moving towards his bed. There they sat. I took my flashlight and rushed back to the main hospital tunnel to see if someone else was been hurt. No one - Thank God! I sat down and waited.’

8 January 1942 - Diary of Philip Buencamino III
‘Malinta Tunnel. I don’t like this place. Yes, it’s safer and bombproof but the air is damp and stuffy. Give me the cool mountain breezes and the starlit skies of Bataan anytime. . . Corregidor is a wreck. The docks have been bombed and rebombed. The chapel is partially destroyed and nothing remains but the cross and the altar. . .

Mrs. Quezon brought me to President Quezon. The President was wearing a white shirt and white riding pants, a striking contrast to the khaki of the soldiers in the Rock. He was carrying a short whip. He looked thin but smart and snappy. The President said that he was glad to see me fighting for my country. He said: “I was in Bataan too during the revolution as an aide to Gen. Mascardo. I know every nook and corner of that place. I got malaria there too.” . . .

At about noontime, I walked with Nini to the hospital lateral. Then suddenly the lights went out. The tunnel walls began to shake. Japs were dropping 1000 pounders. Air inside tunnel was pressing against the lungs. More bombs dropped. Detonation reverberates louder in tunnel than outside. Nurses started mumbling prayers. Salvos of AA guns shook cement under our feet. Then I saw a flashlight. It was Mrs. Quezon. She was looking for her children. Nini said: “We are here mama.” Mrs. Quezon was afraid Nini and Baby were out in the open and felt relieved. There we were - Mrs. Quezon, Nini and I - cramped between soldiers and laborers who rushed inside the tunnel when the raid started. It was the equality of war. Then came the parade of the wounded. Filipino soldiers were rushed in on stretchers. There were cries of pain. Many were unconscious. I saw Fr. Ortiz giving blessings, hearing last minute confessions. He was here, there, everywhere. I saw an American whose leg was covered with blood being rushed to the medical department. Gen. Valdes who is an expert surgeon was busy assisting the wounded. The raid continued. I tried to remain cool even as the tunnel shook with the detonation of bombs and the firing of AA guns, but inside I was getting afraid. I kept telling myself it is safer in the tunnel, not like in Bataan. But I guess fear is contagious and there something about the tunnel that makes one feel asphyxiated. . .’

21 January 1942 - Diary of Philip Buencamino III
‘Mrs. Quezon is slightly thinner. She says she cannot sleep well at night because her son who sleeps in the upper deck of her bed “moves too much.”

Mrs. Quezon showed great concern over hardships suffered by boys in Bataan. She said she was proud of the great stories of heroism of Filipino troops in Bataan. “The whole world,” she said “is talking about it.”

The President’s wife showed me the fuse of the first bomb dropped by Japs in Baguio on Dec. 8, 1941. “I’m keeping this,” she said in her slow, calm manner, “because this is historical.”

She said she was in Baguio when Japs first bombed Philippines. “We thought the planes flying were U.S.,” she said.

Mrs. Quezon told me to send some of our operatives to Arayat to find out what has happened to her farm. I said there were men in Arayat now looking into the matter.

Mrs. Quezon recounted how she and her family went to Corregidor, how they crossed Manila Bay and how an air-raid signal was sounded in the City when their boat left Manila.

She told me to see her before I leave for Bataan because she had some canned stuff for me.

Mrs. Quezon spends her time in the Rock reading, sewing, visiting some of the sick and praying. I think she prays most of the time. She is a very holy woman.’

Rotten eggs in Peking

‘Though among foreign correspondents in China good ones are certainly not wholly lacking, in the final analysis most of them are stupid and are rotten eggs.’ This was the Communists’ explanation for banning foreign journalists in the weeks after taking power, as recorded by Derk Bodde, an eminent American historian born 100 years ago today, in his Peking diary almost exactly 60 years ago. But, Bodde himself also comments: ‘It is difficult to see the justification for a step which, in its sweeping inclusiveness, transcends anything attempted even in Soviet Russia.’

Derk Bodde was born on 9 March 1909, a century ago today, in Brant Rock about 50km southeast of Boston, Massachusetts. As a boy he lived for several years in China, where his father taught physics. He studied at Harvard, and then spent several more years in China on a fellowship, before completing a doctorate at Leiden University in the Netherlands. From 1938, he began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania becoming emeritus Professor of Chinese Studies, and he continued to teach there until retiring in 1975, apart from sabbaticals and a period of war service.

According to an obituary in The New York Times, Bodde, became known as an expert on the Qin dynasty of the late third century BC, as the translator of Fung Yu-lan’s History of Chinese Philosophy, as an analyst of Chinese law of the 18th and early 19th centuries, and as a shrewd observer of Chinese politics of the late 1940s. Inspired by Galia Speshneff, his Russian-born wife who he met in China, he also wrote an analysis of how Chinese culture had influenced Tolstoy - Tolstoy and China - which was described as ‘solid and important’. He died only a few years ago, in 2003. More details of his life can be found on a University of Massachusetts website - Warring States Project.

The New York Times called Bodde ‘a shrewd observer of Chinese politics of the late 1940s’ on the basis of his Peking Diary, a book written thanks to a Fulbright scholarship. After the war, in 1948, Bodde went once again to China as the very first recipient of a scholarship programme set up by Senator J. William Fulbright. According to Wikipedia, the Fulbright Program is now one of the most prestigious awards programmes worldwide, operating in 144 countries and with 51 commissions - ‘more Fulbright alumni have won Nobel Prizes than those of any other academic program, including two in 2002’.

Bodde describes (in Peking Diary) how he got offered the scholarship: ‘One morning in March 1948 the telephone rang in my home in Philadelphia. It was a call from Washington. ‘Would you be prepared to go to China as a Fulbright Fellow?’ the voice asked. ‘We would like an immediate decision, if possible, so that we can make a press release today to say that the Fulbright Program has been started.’ I swallowed my surprise, remembering from wartime experience in Washington that when things happen there, they usually do so explosively. ‘I’ll be tremendously happy to go,’ I replied. ‘Please tell me the details.’ ’

Bodde, with his wife and son Theodore, travelled to, what was then still called, Peking in August 1948. The year he then spent in the Chinese capital happened to coincide with the fall of the Nationalist government and the arrival of the Communists. Throughout this tumultous period in the country’s history, Bodde kept a detailed diary, and this was published in 1950 by Henry Schuman as Peking Diary: A Year of Revolution. It is considered the first full-length account of the Chinese revolution by a neutral observer. The full text is freely available at Internet Archive.

In the introduction, Bodde says the diary ‘is offered in the hope that it may have some historical value as a fragmentary record of a crucial year in Chinese history, seen from the city which became the focus of events during this year’. ‘So far as I know,’ he adds, ‘no other foreigner kept a similar record while I was in Peking, the more so as the news activities of all foreign correspondents were halted by the Communists less than a month after their arrival.’

And here is an extract from the diary (with several paragraphs omitted), dated almost exactly 60 years ago.

4 March 1949
‘It is now thirty-two days since the People’s Army marched into Peking. Following the spate of meetings, parades, and congratulatory messages of the first two weeks, changes of a more concrete nature are beginning to make themselves felt. The honeymoon seems over.

Physically, conditions continue to return to normal. The enormous piles of unsightly refuse which had accumulated in the streets during the siege are gradually being carted away. The reopening of the Palace Museum, and probably of many other parks and museums, is promised within a week. Already the city wall is open as a promenade to those who wish to use it. From its top the evidences of destruction wrought by Peking’s former defenders are clearly apparent: on the wall itself, in the tunnels and piles of brick and earth remaining from hundreds of dugouts and gun emplacements; beyond the wall, in the gray waste of razed buildings which circle the city in a belt several hundred yards wide. Of these, only heaps of rubble now remain, from which boys are gradually carrying away the bricks on their backs. At one or two places a start has been made at rebuilding, but for the most part the scene is one of bleak desolation.

On the production front the papers are filled these days, quite à la Russe, with enthusiastic accounts of how the workers are rehabilitating industry to a point equal to, or even higher than, its presiege level. Improving communications are making it possible for thousands of refugees to return to their homes, helped by free transportation and grain allotments from the government. It was inspiring to revisit the Temple of Confucius a few days ago and compare its present stately calm with the former scene of refugee squalor, misery, and confusion. Almost the last evidences of that unhappy time are the piles of refuse now being carted away in preparation for its formal reopening a few days hence. Voids remain, however, where doors, windows, and furniture used to be all burned as firewood during the siege. [. . .]

Newspapers have suffered a high mortality, at least seven having been closed in Peking, including that to which I had subscribed, the World Daily News. [. . .]

During the past few weeks, however, I have concluded that the integrity of the press depends on more than simply the number of its papers, important though this may be. It does not greatly matter, after all, if a city possesses one, two, or five papers, provided they all print essentially the same news derived from the same source. As a matter of fact, what can be said of the press here in China can also be made to apply, in some respects, to the American press: too many American cities maintain only one paper, too many papers depend for news solely on a single news agency, too many Americans read the same feature columns syndicated throughout the country. The real difference between America and Communist China, however, can be summed up in a sentence: a speech by Mao Tse-tung has a fair chance of being at least partially reported in America; a Truman speech has no chance at all of being printed in Communist China, unless it suits the purpose of the authorities to permit it.

Most disturbing act of thought control is the February 27 order halting all further news activities of Peking’s foreign correspondents. Though only seventeen persons are affected (Australian, Swiss, Swedish, and Dutch, as well as American), the order in effect means the complete cessation of news (other than over the Communist radio) from Communist China to the outside world, since Peking is the only city in North China in which foreign correspondents are stationed. The same order bans the further circulation here of the US Information Service news bulletins, both Chinese and English, thus leaving the short-wave radio (for those who have one) as the only ‘free’ organ of information from the outside world.

It is difficult to see the justification for a step which, in its sweeping inclusiveness, transcends anything attempted even in Soviet Russia. The official explanation is that of ‘conditions during the present state of military activity.’ The Progressive Daily goes a good bit further by beginning its February 28 editorial with the words: ‘Though among foreign correspondents in China good ones are certainly not wholly lacking, in the final analysis most of them are stupid and are rotten eggs.’ As illustration it cites the unfortunate AP and UP dispatches describing the Communist entry of Peking. If these are the real causes for the present step, the Communists could have attained their objectives equally well either by expelling the two correspondents directly involved or by imposing general censorship. Though either step would have undoubtedly aroused criticism abroad, neither could have been as disastrous as the present move, the only practical effect of which is to close the mouths of the new regime’s potential friends abroad, strengthen its enemies, and make more difficult the re-establishment of those diplomatic and commercial ties from which the Chinese Communists themselves stand to benefit. [. . .]’

Woolf on rinderpest and salt

A century ago today, while the Bloomsbury Group of literary friends was beginning to coalesce in London, one of its future members, Leonard Woolf, was more concerned about salt stocks and outbreaks of rinderpest working as a government administrator in Sri Lanka (then still a British colony called Ceylon). Never a diarist like his future wife, he did keep a diary of his duties in Ceylon, and these were published in the early 1960s.

Leonard Sidney Woolf, born in 1882, was the third of ten children. When his father died ten years later, Woolf was sent to board at Arlington House, a preparatory school near Brighton. Thereafter he was educated at St Paul’s and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he joined a group of writers and intellectuals - including Bertrand Russell and E M Forster - who called themselves The Apostles. In 1904, however, he left behind the literary world, and went to work in Ceylon. For the last three years of his time with the Civil Service there, from 1908, he served as the Colonial Administrator for Hambantota, in the very south of island. He returned to London in 1911; and, the next year, married Virginia.

Woolf opposed Britain’s involvement in the First World War, and, having been rejected for military service on health grounds, began to focus his writing increasingly on politics and sociology. The couple settled in Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, and together set up The Hogarth Press, with Leonard as the main director, a position he retained until his death in 1969. His main work, however, was as a political writer and editor. He also spent much time caring for his wife, through the ups and downs of manic depression. After Virginia’s death, he had a long relationship with Trekkie Parsons, an artist, despite her being married.

More information about Woolf can be found at Wikipedia, of course, and at The Diary Junction. Sussex University holds most of his papers (at The Keep) which has an extensive catalogue online. Also online - at Internet Archive - are many of his books, now out of copyright, including his first novel The Village in the Jungle. Publicity (on Amazon) for a modern print of the novel says: ‘It reads as if Thomas Hardy had been born among the heat, scent, sensuality and pungent mystery of the tropics. Translated into both Tamil and Sinhalese, it is one of the best-loved and best-known stories in Sri Lanka.’ In the 1960s, Mr Saparamadu, of the Ceylon Civil Service, said it was ‘generally acknowledged to be the best work of creative writing in English on Ceylon’.

In January 1960, 50 years after his administrator’s stint in the country, Woolf returned to Ceylon (although independent by this time, it would remain Ceylon until the name Sri Lanka was adopted in 1972), where he was received with ‘much honour’ (again according to Saparamadu). As a result of the visit, and because of Woolf’s literary eminence, the country’s prime minister directed that the official diary written by Woolf half a century earlier, when serving as the Hambantota administrator, should be published by the government. An edition was thus printed by The Ceylon Historical Journal in 1962, and another by The Hogarth Press (the company set up by Woolf but, by then, part of Chatto & Windus) in 1963 - Diaries in Ceylon 1908-1911, Record of a Colonial Administrator

Saparamadu explains, in the book’s introduction, that there is a vast corpus of official diaries written by government agents and administrators from 1808 to 1941, and that the diaries were meant to contain a full record of work done by each writer and a full description of events and and the conditions of their districts. ‘Woolf’s diaries,’ he says, ‘have been selected as a good introductory to them not only because they are typical of the diaries but because of the wide public interest in them and also since they help to throw some light on the experience in the villages of Hambantota which provided the inspiration for Woolf’s celebrated book The Village in the Jungle.’

Here are two extracts, taken from exactly 100 years ago today, which give a good indication of Woolf’s preoccupations at the time - cattle and salt!

3 March 1909
‘I was woken at 3am by the Stock Inspector’s messenger. My wrath was appeased by learning that it is not rinderpest. I heard today that all the contractors who are removing salt from Palatupana on Government account at Rs1.70 per ton had left the lewaya [shallow lagoon]. This was a strike to force my hand and make me pay Rs2 per ton. In the evening I got hold of the previous contractor and I was determined that he should take another contract. Eventually with great difficulty and a certain amount of pressure I induced him to enter into a contract to remove 10,000 cwts a month until all the salt on this side of the lewaya is removed. As he will probably pay the carters about Rs1.50 a ton, I feel that I have scored. He undertakes with me to do it at Rs1.80 per ton which is the old rate.’

4 March 1909
‘Another case of rinderpest but again out of the isolated contacts. There are now 4 isolated contacts left. In the evening I went down to the Maha Lewaya and released the 230 bulls there. I have had them in quarantine since February 18th and the Stock Inspector considered it safe to let them to go yesterday but I thought I would keep them an extra day. Great rejoicing among the carters who told me that in future they would obey any order I gave them, so I told them they had better prove what they said by going away and removing salt for two months from Bundala. 32 carts immediately left for Bundala, at least so they said.’

High drama in Cambodia

General Hok Lundy, Cambodia’s notorious police chief and an ally of the country’s prime minister Hun Sen, has just died in a helicopter crash. The circumstances of the crash may be suspicious, but then much about Hok Lundy was suspicious. Of many outstanding accusations against him, one is that he ordered the killing of Piseth Pilika, a famous dancer and actress, who had recently finished an adulterous affair with Hun Sen. Pilika kept a diary, and this shows, astonishingly, that at the time of her murder, she considered Hok Lundy a friend. Other evidence suggests that, in fact, she had had an affair with him earlier and that he had introduced her to Hun Sen!

Hok Lundy died on 9 November when his helicopter crashed on the way to Svay Rieng, his home province. The deputy commander of the Cambodian infantry, Sok Saem, and two pilots also died. Because Hok Lundy had many enemies there has been widespread speculation that the crash might not have been an accident, and the government has promised a full investigation.

Hok Lundy’s death has not been widely reported in the British or American press. However, The Guardian website does have an obituary. This states that Hok Lundy first rose to prominence as governor of Phnom Penh in 1990 (although Wikipedia says he was governor of Svay Rieng province). In 1994, Hun Sen appointed him national police chief, reporting directly to him (not to his nominal boss, the interior minister). Then, in 1997, after a bloody power struggle between partners in the coalition government, Hok Lundy played a significant role in capturing and executing royalist generals.

The Guardian obituary goes on to explain that Hok Lundy was also responsible in 2003 for allowing anti-Thai protestors to run riot in the capital, attacking Thai-owned properties, and for then persuading Hun Sen to sack the capital’s popular governor as a scapegoat. ‘That Hun Sen sided with his police chief was no surprise,’ it says, ‘as Hok Lundy had already married his daughter off to one of Hun Sen’s sons’.

One of the most heinous crimes to which Hok Lundy was linked was the murder of the Cambodian dancer and actress, Piseth Pilika. Born in 1965, both her parents died during the Khmer Rouge regime, and she was brought up by an uncle. Her aunt was a teacher at the University of Fine Arts and encouraged her to study traditional Cambodian dance there. As she became an increasingly popular performer, so she moved into acting, and starred in a successful movie Sromorl Anthakal (Shadow of Darkness). But in July 1999, she was gunned down in the street, and died a week later. Some 10,000 people filed past her body at the University, one of the largest such ceremonies in modern Cambodian history.

Reports of her shooting, death and funeral in Cambodia Daily, an English-language newspaper, can be found on the pisethpilika.free website. At the time, there were rumours that the killing might have been ordered by ‘the jealous wife’ of a ‘high-level government official’. The rumours soon hardened to name the official as no less a person than the prime minister Hun Sen, and that it was his wife, Bun Rany, who may have hired the hitmen to kill Pilika. Further twists to this story were subsequently uncovered by revelations in Pilika’s own diary, and through information given to the French news magazine L’Express by Heng Pov, a former Phnom Penh police commissioner.

Pilika’s diary is available online, also at pisethpilika.free - in Khmer. However, her very last entry has been translated into English. It identifies Hun Sen as her lover, Bun Rany as her enemy, and Hok Lundy as a friend.

10 May 1999
‘Mr Hok Lundy, Director-General of the National Police, had asked me to go to meet with him because he had something to tell me. He sent two bodyguards to fetch me. I asked my younger sister to accompany and we went together. I was at the same time afraid and happy because I thought there might be a message for me from Sen. I met with Hok Lundy at Kien Svay, at a restaurant situated in a quiet place. He told me to go and hide somewhere for a while because Mrs Bun Rany Hun Sen was very angry against me and was plotting to kill me. I was very afraid but tried not to show my feeling. I gritted my teeth but could not repress tears. I had not imagined somebody would fool me so terribly. I am so disappointed because I have never sold my body to Samdech Hun Sen. We loved each other like husband and wife, so I thought. I realise how naive I have been in believing his words. I have never been fooled like that. This is my first lesson, I have learnt to know about deceitful people. I don’t know whether they would spare my life or sentence me to death because they rule over the country. Only God can help me. My only response to and shield against them are goodness and righteousness.’

In October 1999, L’Express published other extracts from Pilika’s diary (available on the KI Media website) chronicling her secret relationship with the prime minister (although initially she did not even write his name in the diary). Here are three entries:

‘Late at night, . . . called me over the phone. I was very happy, at the same time apprehended and overjoyed, I could barely talk. Then nothing. Next, he called me again. This time, I only felt the joy because he thought about me; his words were worthy of respect and love . . . Our first rendez-vous took place on August 18, 1998, at 8:00 o’clock, in the house behind the Botum pagoda. I decided to ask for divorce, because I thought that I could not remain married, even if the new one would abandon me. . . My relation with . . . became very close.’

‘My relations with Samdech Hun Sen are excellent. . . On January 31, 1999, slightly before 10:00 PM, he came to the new house I just bought in Takhmao. Then he visited me again at night. . . His words were so tender, I did not dare believe it . . .’

‘When his wife learnt about relation, and after we stopped talking to each other over the phone, my heart broke. . . On Sunday, April 11, 1999, Samdech Hun Sen called me one last time. He asked me not to see him again, and to deny that anything ever happened between us . . . I could not forget him, I remained prostrated for hours. . . wrote poems which came from the bottom of my soul, I cried every day, and my heart was filled with bitterness.’

Years later, in 2006, L’Express published a startling interview (reproduced in English on Asia Finest Discussion Forum) with Heng Pov, a former police commissioner and an advisor to Hun Sen, who had taken refuge in France. He claimed that the government was responsible for many killings over the previous ten years, including that of Pilika. As a result of the revelations, the Asian Human Rights Commission put out a statement which provides a useful summary of the claims. This is what it said with regard to ‘the shooting of screen idol Piseth Pilika on 6 July 1999, which led to her death’:

‘Piseth Pilika is widely known to have had an affair with Hun Sen. Heng Pov claims that Hok Lundy had had an affair with her first and then introduced her to Hun Sen, whose wife blamed Hok Lundy for matchmaking her husband with the actress. He says that Hok Lundy made amends by promising to ‘separate’ Piseth Pilika from Hun Sen, and that the killer was one of Hok Lundy’s bodyguards.’