Ralph Collins
Ralph joined the Department of External Affairs in 1940. He retired in 1979. He began his Foreign Service in Chungking, China in 1943 and his last appointment abroad was as Canada’s first ambassador to the People’s Republic of China in Beijing, in…
Ralph Edgar Collins
Ralph Collins was born in China. He joined the Department in 1940. An acknowledged expert in Asian affairs, he was a contributing participant in what is often referred to as the golden age of Canadian diplomacy. He served abroad in Chungking, Washington,…
Legacies: A Chinese Mosaic
Chia Chen and Chia Jung were imprisoned in the Prefecture of Chin-yi while the Ning Mansion was confiscated, together with all effects and clothing.
Letters // Correspondance
I cannot agree more with Diana Lary’s case for more exchanges between the Department, Universities and the Private sector (bout de papier, vol. 8, no. 1, “Outsider, Inside”). The four university sinologists I have personally known in Beijing are all leading very…
Warlords of Tang
“Actually, Lydia,” said LDC Liebnitz one day to the lady of his life, “Jimmy the Turk isn’t as bad as they come. If you want really obscure reports, you should see the ones his grandfather Hamish wrote and my father had to…
Dumplings in Harbin
In Vol. 7, No. 2 of bout de papier, Hugh Stephens described the rigours of learning Chinese and concluded that had he not learned the language, “going to China would have been like having no eyes or ears. It would have been…
Outsider Inside
For most of my working life I have been a professor, but for two years I was metamorphosed into a strange hybrid — the resident sinologist and cultural attaché in the Canadian Embassy in Beijing. I left the tranquillity of academic life…
“So You Want to Learn Chinese”
Story by Hugh Stephens Photos by Fredericka Gregory
The Golden Hope
Peter Stursberg, noted World War II CBC correspondent and eminent practitioner of oral history, has taped interviews with three score Canadian missionaries and their children, Sinologists and Chinese to try to record and evaluate the aims and achievements of 60 years of…
Over the Khunjerab to Kashgar
In May 1986, the governments of Pakistan and China announced the opening to foreign nationals of the Karakorum Highway over the Khunjerab Pass. At an altitude of 16,000 feet, the Khunjerab is reportedly the highest paved mountain crossing in the world. Its…
