bout de papier, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2006) — Spring 2006 // Printemps 2006, p. 4
Editor, very much enjoyed ine two cover stone Lin vour Winter 2005 edition and woul like to add footnotes to each.
“Left Behind in Nanjing” recounts among other things the hurried departure of the Canadian staff of our mission there in 1951. Before he left, Chester Ronning, the First Secretary, had his personal effects packed in six wooden crates but, unable to ship them out, left them in the care of the British mission in Nanjing. When the British moved their office to Beijing some months later, they took Chester’s belongings with them but, because of a shortage of storage space in their chancery, had to keep them under a lean-to in the yard at the rear. This turned out to be fortuitous for Chester since, when the Red Guards burned down the British chancery during the Cultural Revolution in 1966, about the only things left intact were his six crates.
In June, 1971, when Chester returned to China as the guest of Premier Chou En-lai, I had the pleasure of taking him around Beijing to visit some of the places he had not seen in decades. I also had his six crates moved from the British mission to our newly established embassy where he and I sat on the floor of a vacant office and pried them open with crowbars. While somewhat dusty after 20 years of confinement, his personal effects were still intact and we subsequently had them shipped back to his home in Camrose, Alberta.
Your second cover story, “A Year of Self- Funded Leave,” also brought back memories for me with Paul Gibbard’s description and excellent photographs of his ascent of Mount Kinabalu. I had the joy (agony?) of scaling the same peak with a group of Chinese friends back in September, 1961, while I was doing a five-year stint in North Borneo training English teachers in Chinese schools. Our guide for the occasion happened to be the same renowned Gunting bin Lagadan whose memorial plaque is visible in the photo of Paul on the cover of your magazine. I recall that, despite the fact Gunting was 73 years old at the time, he was able to propel himself up the mountain with a great deal more ease than the rest of us could muster.
With best regards,
Martin Collacott
Vancouver
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2006) — Spring 2006 // Printemps 2006, p. 4. Read the rest of this issue →
