Vol.2 No.8
Foreign Gorrespondents' Glub, Hong Kong
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Ww The Officers: President
Anthony Paul First Vice President Frank Beatty Second Vice President Keith Jackson Treasurer
Derek Davies Secretary Tony Scott
The Untold Storyof
fümmunist Genocicle in Cambodia
During my nine years in lndochina the only visit I made to Cambodia was a 3G minute stopover between Saigon and Bangkok - before that little country was ripped by war. I knew it only by the words carried by friends who had been there, and wanted badly to return. Hugh Vàn Es, who took the cover photo near the end of the war, and Bert Okuley, who wrote his comments on Tony paul's
- Murder of a Gentle Land - did live for lengths of time in Cambodia. They know at
book
first hand why people returned often,
and
they know the whys of the outrage that wells up in those who knew Cambodia at what has
The Staff¡ Editor Bert W. Okuley Photographer
Hugh Van Es Eddie MartÍnez Advertising
happened in the past few years - and it didn't necessarily begin with the Khmer Rouge.
It is the
festive season. perhaps Cam-
bodia is not the. most gratifying reminder of the season . . . but let us not forget that there is a time and a place outside our own.
-
Nida Cranbourne
DER.
Fl ublished monthlv as
|'
HulGrü f EcuHc
an
organ of rhe Foréign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong. Offices at l bth Floor, Sutherland House, 3 Chater
Road, Hong Kong. Tel: 5-
237734 and 5-233003.
Cables: CORCLUB HONG KONG. Address all correspondence to: Editor, Foreign Correspondents' Glub of
Hong Kong, 1sth Floor, 3 Chater Road, Hong Kong. Adver-
Sutherland House,
tising: Nida Cranbourne. First Floor, 30 lce House St., Hong Kong. Tel: 5-248482.
following their military victory over
Printed by Yee Tin Tong Printing Press, Ltd., Aik San Factory Building, Ground
By Bert W. Okuley
Floor, Block A, 14, Westlands
the place because the food was the best in town. Phnom Penh. A city of sarongs whose lovely people were at peace
Road, Ouarry Bay, Hong Kong. Tel: 5-622271-7.
LE@W
Let us consider pre-war Phnom
Penh, that gorgeous city of towering trees and broad boulevards, of well-kept French colonial villas. The perfect mixture
of East and West. Phnom Penh. One could get away from it all in old Phnom Penh. Perhaps in the Hotel Le Royal with its vast, high-ceilinged rooms overlooking a beautiful courtyard where aging white-jacketed waiters
served up the finest wines in Southeast Asia with your salade nicoise. Nearby was the Wat Phnom, the country's most sacredBuddhist shrine. Phnom Penh. You had the oc-
casional Mercedes in those (pre1 970) halcyon days, but for the most part the Phnom Penh nights
were disturbed only by the occasional whistle of cyclo tires
//22.'., , trt,'rtl Sole Aqents: FRENCH FASHIONS LTD., Hons Kons.
t
with the world. Where a
barber once literally chased me down the
street after I mistakenly gave him 50-riel note for a S-riel haircut.
a
rhe American-backed Lon Nol government in April 1975. The book does not deal with the war, only its aftermath.
Survivors of mass murders which rival those of Nazi Germany
tell in their own words of 1 million people. That's right. Between
5OO,0O0
Phnom Penh. Less than 20O miles away lay the treasures of
and 1 million people of a total population of 7 million put to death or who were too weak to survive the
Angkor Wat, and one could hop an Air France flight which deposited
horrors perpetrated by the fanatical minions of 2 dozen. homicidal
you at the delightful spa of Siem Reap only a few miles from this
maniacs who operate under the name Angka Loeu, or "Organization
cen-
on High." And has the United Nations (of which Democratic Kampuchea
Phnom Penh. Playboy Prince Norodom Sihanouk didn't much care for American journalists but if
anything about it? Has the Con-
wonder of the world hidden deep in
the Cambodian jungles for turies.
you listed your occupation as bible salesman or farmer or some such you could get a visa easily enough. Remember Phnom Penh.
Then read Murder of a Gentle Land by John Barron and Anthony
Paul (Reader's Digest
Press;
somehow became a member) done gress of the United States bothered
to do anything about it? No. They sit on the banks of the East River and on Capitol Hill like
twin
conventions
of
most grisly business
us$s.95).
Auschwitz.
The cyclos more than likly were
This book, also published as Peace with Horror (Hodder and
language newspapers
Stoughton; [4.95), deals with the g enocide carried out by the shadowy Khmer Rouge leadership
yogarishis
while the xenophobic regime of Premier Pol Pot goes about the
gliding along Monivong Boulevard. bearing their occupants to a quiet dinner at the Circle Sportif or the Cafe de Paris, where you put up with the arrogant Corsican who ran
the
slaughter of between 5OO,O0O and
since
(And why do the English-
of Hong Kong dignify this madman with the
t¡tle "Mr"?).
Don't read this book
before 3
retiring. But read it. I read it while vacationing in East Java. Riding back to Jakarta on the train, my comPanion (who knew Phnom Penh well) and I found ourselves staring out at the miles of paddies and rice farmers and im-
agining what
it
was like for
the
That, according to a suryivor who managed to escaPe to
old lth Thaim, whom the Khmer Rouge had drafted to drive the truck, remembers that a terrible
Phnom Penh. And this narrative:
stillness settled over the plantation, the Khmer Rough saying nothing' 'the blood like water on the grass."' There are 212 Pages of this horror in a meticulously researched
Thailand, was the fate of manY girls taken awaY to the countrYside from
".
Led bY an officer called
Taan, who was in his earlY thirties'
inhabitants at the time. I figured that between 2O,OOO and 30,000 people must have died just during the first month, just in the one area
from Phnom Penh into described."
Loeu.
"Just think, these guYs have not had a woman in five Years!' exclaimed the chief."
YOUR
NEW OFFICE
And most people looked with amusement on William F. BuckleY's
suggestion .\ s#; u.:.
1r'"sÉ: '
the
Cambodian PeoPle and to sPare the
world a repetition of their tragedy."
Murder
of a
Gentle Land
is
available at varying Prices in Hong Kong. lt's $ô4'40 at Harris, but $49.50 at KellY and Walsh in lce House Street.
tf'"iotOier. rounded up 1O (former) civil servants together with their wives and children, about 60 Peo-
book in which Mr. Barron and Mr Paul were assisted bY Katherine
each behind the back, forced them aboard a truck at about 5 P'm" drove them some 3 kilometers out of town to a banana Plantation' ' ' "Weeping, sobbing, begging for their lives, the prisoners were pushecl into a clearing among the banana trees, then formed into a ragged
eating their meals together, small emaciated children would approach
ple in all. TheY bound the hands of
line, the terrified mothers
and each
children clustering around head of the familY. With m¡litary orderliness the communists thrust
and beg for food' The Khmer Rouge had issued strict orders not to give them any food. On more than one occasion theY chased the little
- algae, leaves, tree
in
things awaY with sticks"' -
a
schoolteacher.
"l was thinking about all the bodies I had seen during one
mites."
preface, John Barron
writes: "We believe that
the documentation conclusively shows that cataclysmic events have occurred in Cambodia and that their occurrence is not subject to rational dispute, We hoPe that uPon learning of these events, PeoPle in all
each official forward one at a time and forced him to kneel between two soldiers armed with bayonet-
bark,
bindweed, locusts, grasshoPPers' lizards, snakes, rats, worms, ter-
ln his
lnterior Design ond
Controcting servce
We soeciolise in Commerciolond Residentiol work.
before escaPing: "Our main diet was a very bitter
Paul: "Soon desPeration drove the exiles to eat literally anything edible
Clark and Ursula Naccache. "Often, while the soldiers were
CIARIDGE HCUSE now offers o complete
And while You're eating Your Christmas pie, reflect on this account from Ung Beng Chun, who survived six months in a New Village in northwest Cambodia
water before we could eat it. We also ate the bark of a tree' We'd first scrape it, then boil it in water until it turned into a thick paste"' And from Messrs Barron and
I wonder what haPPened to mY friends in Phnom Penh? I wonder what haPPened to the old cyclo driver outside the Monorom Hotel, which some correspondents Preferred to Le Phnom
Wewillsolve vour problems with¡n
'
yortbudget Tolk to our expert Soff ot
CLAIìIDGC HOUS€ uo. l2c Sncere lnzuronce Bldg. 4-ó FlennesyRd FbrgKorg
Td5278\21-4
(neé Royal),who wa¡ted dailY to take me to the morning Press briefing?
I wonder what haPPened to mY
Vignettes from the Past: Khieu Samphan of the Khmer Rouge greets Prince Sihanouk, the tragedy of war and a Peaceful temPle'
ever-cheerful driver, always with a bottle of Jim Beam handY at the end of a daY and who, thank God, I was able to bring to Hong Kong
once for a couPle of weeks and who delighted in the FCC? I wonder what haPPened to the
scholarly office manager who
then stabbed the victim
decided to stay on in APril, 1975 instead of accepting evacuation with
chest and the other through the
the Americans? I wonder what haPPened to mY stringer-photographers, who didn't
back.
" Family bY familY the communists pressed the slaughter,
get paid verY much for Producing at great personal risk the Photos You
moving down the line' As each man lay dying, his anguished, horrorstruck wife and children were
Hôno Kono. Tel.5-2601MI7 ' inÁJsociaiion *¡rh the Avanl Garde Group
sYndicated
the ongoing annihilation of
fruit, which we had to soak
simultaneouslY, one through the
202 Far East Exchange Buildrng,
in his
column in the United States that a combined United Nations force do something to stop the madness in Phnom Penh.
-.-!
tipped AK-47 rifles. The soldiers
Office ConcePts (Asio)
the
countryside, from which he escaPed to Viet Nam.
same kind of PeoPle whose fate it was to be in Phnom Penh or Battambang or KomPong Cham or Pursat in April, 1975. ". . . Before the entire village all the girls from Phnom Penh would be lined up and each made to dance so as to disPlaY herself. After the exhibition each (Khmer Rouge) invalid from the convalescent camP would be allowed to Pick a wife from among the girls. AnY girls left over would be taken bY war heroes' All the Phnom Penh girls that same evening would be married off in a mass wedding staged bY Angka
Dr Vann HaY, taken
parts of the world will act to halt
dragged uP to his bodY. The women, forced to kneel, also received the simultanous baYonet thrusts. The children and babies, last to die, were stabbed where they stood.
"(As) the last child was dis-
patched, an eYewitness, 35-Year-
cãme to see me, half of whom I knew were not going to live. I used to see between 2O and 3O sick people every day. Extrapolating to cover the area which I had traversed, between Oudong and the border, plus the estimated number of
saw in the newspapers for five years of warT I wonder what haPPened to the scholarly Young man who ran a
cultural magazine and, although he couldn't sPeak English nor I French, we were buddies? They're all dead, Goddamnit. That's what happened to them.
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HO CHI MINH CITY, Viet Nam Old Saigon is dying. ln its place is growing up a new city with a new name, a city that is quieter, smaller and less cosmopolitan. It is probably better for many factory employees and others now known as "workers." lt is worse, at least economically, for much of the middle class and for many of the
minology.
"lt is quite natural that those
BEST
who got rich on the war and exploited the workers don't like the
I
CONTACT DON PYMAN AT 5.26225,5 ( 4 LINES } ON DROP IN FOR A CHAT ABOUT YOUR HOLIDAY PLANS: Rooms 12lJ4 or 1502, Tung Ming Building, 40 Des Voeux Road, Gentral, Hong Kong.
CARDINAL TRAVEL CONSULTANTS LTD.
By Richard Dudman
Copyright 1977. St. l-ouis Port-D¡rpatch
self-employed, now called the "bourgeoisie" in Marxist ter-
Y()U r,,l
OT]IET CITY
I
ÁÐ
Ery
new regime," said Le Ouang Chang, deputy chairman of the People's Committee that governs the city. An American visitor is confronted by many changes that have taken place since the communists
won and the last
Americans
departed April 30, 1975.
The name itself has
changed.
The former capital is now Ho Chi
Minh City on all the maps,
on
business letterheads, on the side of the Ho Chi Minh City tourist office's blue-and-white airport minibus and increasingly in coversation. But ordinary citizens and frequently even communist officials
Dudman wao tho fir¡t
Arnerican roporter admifted to Vietnam for an extended vi¡it since the U.S. forcea woro withdrawn. This article wa¡ filed from Hong Kong after hi¡ trip. still speak of "Saigon," and people in other parts of South Vietnam
seem unfamiliar with the new d
esignation.
Cha
nge
comes
gradually.
Officials say Saigon's wartime peak population of 4 million has already been reduced to 3,3 million, mostly by the return of former peasants to the underpopulated
countryside. The city is losing its American influence. There is no more Coca-
Cola. The plant has shut down, although a glass factory still turns out the familiary Coke bottles, to be used for a local soft drink.
No more new American
in, of course. And all motor traff¡c is much automobiles come
reduced, including the motorbikes and three-wheel Lambretta jitneys
and motorized pedicabs whose defective mufflers used to cover Saigon with a permanent blue haze.
Even
the French influence
is
fading. A French businessman said he was one of only about a dozen
"true" Frenchmen still here meaning those who had not married Vietnamese. The French schools, which used
to educate the children of the merchant and officer class, have been converted into public schools with
government-prescribed 7
curricula that include MarxismLeninism and the history of Viet Nam's Communist revolution along with the old standard subjects.
A
sampling of teachers and students suggests that the new regime is emphasizing Russian,
proud of themselves and their new skills, When asked what they did with the small amounts they made from sales of their handicrafts, they giggled and said it went for cakes, candy and bananas. The swarm of beggars and pimps
possibly in
that used to line the walk next to
that order - ahead of French. Old Saigon's lavish French and Italian restaurants with their huge
the verandah of the old Continental Palace, once a hangout for Western
English and Chinese
-
menus and expensive wines are mostly gone with the Americans and the American dollars, One of the few st¡ll operating is the
soldiers, spies and journalists, are all gone. Only a half-dozen beggars were seen on this visit, mostly in
at
"liberation." Officials charged that
addiction was actively promoted by
top officials of the regime
of
President Nguyen Van Thieu to enrich themselves and manipulate the victims.
At a drug treatment center, Dr
Pham Phi Long said the addicts are restrained if necessary for an immediate "cold turkey" denial of all drugs, with acupuncture and oriental medicines to help the addict get
days. No one has died
Steve, the glib Vietnamese-born Chinese who runs it, said he planned to close in five or sfx months and go to Hong Kong, where his family
in
the
withdrawal stage, he said. Then come three to six months of gymnastics, sports, singing, oc-
cupational training and selfcriticism sessions to develop selfrespect and a sense of "collective
lives. He complained that taxes
were too high, that the new government is too friendly to Moscow and that Larue beer, which
for 1 dong (44 cents) for a large bottle in government-run
sells
hotels, costs him 5 dongs on the free market. He sells it for 7. He apologized that he would have to
Tu Do St. - once Catinat and now Dong Khoi (Simultaneous Uprising) St. - was Outside,
to
Remaining orphanages are renamed "bamboo shoot" schools to connote future promise rather than burden or un-
the grating over the front window.
the central market. Streets are not entirely safe even
Thieu regime, direct traffic,
were seen learning to make baskets and doormats. One class was learn-
wristwatches before venturing into crowds. Small boys still can grab a
truckload of soldiers with Chinesemade AK-47 rifles was seen one afternoon in Cholon, the Chinese
ing to read and write Írom a 24-
watch in a flash from an unwary
district.
year-old former prostitute who had an 1 1th grade education. The young women are confined to the school for the six-month initial course. An official said almost
stranger.
all had to be treated for venereal diseases. Three-hundred have "graduated" to take useful jobs,
he
said.
Several said, through a Communist interpreter, that they were
I
wrecked in another of the bloody
river and then with a mine blast
Viet Cong bombings, is once more
that caught U.S. servicemen fleeing down the gangplank. lt still charges 1 O per cent for service, a practice
luxury hotel, reserved for special
customarily remove their
Officials say there are 15,OOO to 2O,OO0 drug addicts on the city's
streets. Before Saigon fell, there were said to be 15o,o0o, but many vanished with "liberation," possibly influenced by the spirit of the revolution, as an official said of the many prost¡tutes who disappeared. Of the addicts, 90 per cent were said to have been on heroin during
ïhe only violence seen or
A
heard area
in nearly two weeks in the
consisted of two dozen shots at midday near the Roman Catholic cathedral in Post Office Square. An
official said a man had stolen
a
bicycle and policemen had converged on the scene firing their pistols into the air, catching the man and recovering the bicycle. Police could be seen runn¡ng across the in-
a
Palace, where dissident Vietnamese airmen lried to bomb President Ngo Dinh Diem and where Viet Cong Troops besieged President Thieu in 1968, stands empty, said to be undergoing repa¡rs. Across the front in Vietnamese is the omnipresent slogan, "Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom." A huge portrait of the author of
that statement, Ho Ch¡ Minh, decorates the tower of the city hall. The massive white U.S. Embassy
building, where Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker took refuge in 1968 on the same roof from which helicopter plucked Ambassador Graham Martin in 1975, is being
converted into offices for the government's Bureau of Oil and The My Can floating restaurant
Itisntt
unknown in the north where tipping is deemed a degrading capitalist device to depress wages.
guests.
Polish and Soviet tourists were
entertained recently in the redecorated Rex nightclub with (Please see page 17.)
the recipe that separates '-
dontsf
thepe
kit There is a common opinion that
Despite an occasional incident,
law and order have generally taken the place of the turmoil of wartime Saigon. Tan-uniformed police, many of them patrolmen under the
in the daytime. Visitors to the city, including Vietnamese from Hanoi,
of the young women
tacked it, first with a bomb from the
have changed.
The Rex Building, which housed
the joint U,S. Public Affairs Office and a U.S. officers' club that was
wantedness,
The prostitutes who used to
hundreds
Many landmarks of old Saigon lndependence
palace.
Gas.
into private homes.
beggar peered at the diners through
although now with ordinary Vietnamese. The Viet Cong once at-
figure on the number of VietnameseAmerican orphans but that orphans
segregate those with American fathers and to promote tha adoption of all orphans
was only one other group in the restaurant, several Swedes. A
st¡ll does a capac¡ty business,
presidential
the roof of the old
a
The policy is not
almost deserted at 9:3O p.m. There
tersection and taking positions on
mastery." Dr Long said the school, one of several, had restored 4.000 addicts to normal life in two years. A city official said she had no
of all types numbered 4O,OOO in orphanages and that there were many more not institutionalized.
a
crowd the joints along Tu Do and drink tea "cocktails" with American Gls are gone, many to schools for "restoring the dignity of women," On a visit to one of the schools,
the heroin supply was cut off
through the rough f¡rst four to six
Pizzeria.
charge $16 for a half-bottle of moderately good French wine.
the war, switching to opium when
aìl oins are the same.
"
lt may be true of some. But not of Gordon's. For the way we use juniper.
coriander and other botanical ingredients in ourdistilling recipe. makes subtle differences to the taste of our gin. The actualdetails are of course a secret. But the results are not. fürdon's is thebest selling gin in the world. Need we say rncre?
GORDONS The in drink for generations
@trICTtrII,vELL
CHRISTMAS
Marty, the Club guitarist and vocalist, is ioined by ) others for a folk night.
-1977
Brian Talboys of New Zealand explaĂns a point at recent Press Conference at the FCC.
a
I
Sir Denis H a milton of Fleet Street adresses the
FCC Lim Thanh Van and Burt Lancaster
get together on the set Ă?n
Los
Angeles. Van was formerlY a UPI photographer in Hong Kong. What is it this noted television executive has on his mind?
"Mummy, daddy's practising again." Dick Hughes Jr was the first jazz pianist to play solo at the National
Dadday's pract¡s¡ng with typical Hughes style
in Sydney. He has also played in Paris and London.
His father can't even whistle, much less caïy a tune, but Dick Hughes Jr can. He is what you would call a musician. Louis Armstrong once said that
Dick was Australia's no. 1 jazz pianist, a tribute that the Sydney Daily Mírror columnist and subeditor modestly disclaims. Now comes word from Australia that, following in our doyen's footsteps, Dick has wr¡tten a book. It's called Daddy's Practising Again, (Marlin, $4.95). He got the t¡tle for the book frorn a remark made by one of his three daughters when he was fiddling around with a new composition:
A BRAVE GUY SAYS "THANKS'' would like
Dear Friend:
These days, when he's not toiling appears regularly at the Sydney Journalists' Club and one of the city's leading resta urants. Like his grandfather, Dick taught himself. how to play the piano. A new record album will come out around the same time as Dick's book. To quote from the dust jacket
As hard as
it may seem, Dave Jayne is gone. I am sure you arc awarc by now Dave was killed in a plane crash in Amman, Jordan, September 23 while on assignment for ABC News.
for Rupert Murdoch, Dick
The legions of Dave's friends around the world have organized the David W. Jayne lll MemorialTrust. The purpose of the Trust is three-hold:
of Daddy's Practising Agaín: "ln this book, the first by an Australian jazz musician, Dick Hughes reminisces about some of
the great jazzmen he has known
and presents an absorbing picture
of the jazz scene in
Melbourne, Sydney, London, Paris and New York . . . lnformed by Hughes' extraordinary memory, his lively sense
of humor and his life-long passion for jazz, this book is a unique document in the history oÍ jazz." The book presumably will be in Hong Kong shops around the first
of the year.
-
Bert Okuley.
Jim and Margot Miller of VOA
are packing up for a
Dear Mr President and Members,
I
ffill0ll0nI[ûllll
Opera House
to thank all the
members of the FCC in Hong Kong
on behalf of Mrs Anant Chunchun
and myself for the
contribution made to assist our families after our
battlefield act¡on last January
in
which Anant died, The fund money was recently sent to Bangkok.
Mr Anant's second wife gave birth to his son last June, so the
money from Hong Kong and Tokyo will be used half to help this child that Anant never saw. Mrs Anant has asked me to send her thanks to the FCC and all those people who contributed. I would also like to thank all of my ol9 friends in Hong Kong, and those others that I do not know personally for their concern and their
c/o Walter Porges 7 West 66th Street New York, New York 1OO23
Stephen, 8. 2l To establish an honorary award in Dave's name at Williams College where he was an honor student. 3) To establish a special award in journalism at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in Dave's
Plans are going foward in Chicago to establish a suitable memorial to Larry Buchman. You will be advised when firm decisions have been made.
honor.
Executive co-chairpersons of the Memorial Trust are Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters. Others serving on the committee are Howard K. Smith of ABC News; Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather of CBS News; John Chancellor of NBC News; Elie Abel, Dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism; and John Chandler, President of Williams College.
Each of us has our own special memory of the way Dave gave of himself to all and the high standards for which he stood. We ask that you be as generous as
new
They'll be leaving Asia early
:
in
January, presumably with new pool cues to replace those destroyed by Miller on a recent weekend in the 18th floor. Jim will be remembered around the FCC as one of the people who
worked long hours (anonymously) behind the scenes to get the Club's
redecoration successfully com-
ä T
--.1
2 1 o E
fl
The "Spanish Lazarus,"
Don Javier Martinez Lindbergh Padilla of La Vanguardia, returned to Asia "for
cLo:l.
ã E3ß B l.q¡. o ; 9r8. 9 0-5.1 ? RNg ô z^ -trk(D
in November, but almost before he got settled back in his old haunts, was off again to Barcelona. The way Senor Padilla described it, his editors decided there was not really that much news in Asia of interest to readers in Spain. Adios, good"
;
at
co
:.=
o g I
ol/,
33E
= E'
:S 8ÊE o dx o
amigo.
forget.
=
Yours sincerely,
!
I
Joseph Lee ABC News Bangkok 12
Contributions should be mailed to: David W. Jayne lll Memorial Trust
lf you wish your contibution to be applied to a specific purpose of the Trust, kindly include such instructions with your contribution.
action, which I greatly appreciate. Your moral support also I will not
Thailand
Porges.
1) To provide for the education of Dave's four children: David lV, 14; Lisa, 13; Debbi, 12; and
assignment in Panama.
pleted.
Trustees of the Memorial are Dave's widow, Betsey; his brothers-in-law, George Baldwin and Neil Nichols; and two long-time friends, Paul Altmeyer and Walter
AIB ilIAOilUI
B
Ë
.+
+o.
= J,+a ^ td 9,o t¡, all
+ II
o
-l
lure of that city - we stayed in a cavernous hotel that had been built for the long-departed Soviet technicians - we were all anxious to reach Shanghai.
I
For me there was a special reason.
Some people wouldn't go across the street to meet their father-in-law, but I had come halfway around
the world
- 1O,OOO miles and through the gates of history's most closed soc¡ety - to meet mine. It turned out to be one of the most dramatic and emot¡onal experiences during my more than a dozen years as a foreign correspondent. But on that first morning in Shanghai I was still not certain that the meeting would come off; my excitement at just being in the largest city in the world was heightened by the suspense over whether or not I would get to see my
wife's father. Father-in-law Chen, Neilan and T'ai-li, 1973.
By Edward Neilan
onlhetoail IoDck¡ g The Shanghai Express hissed to a halt in the No. l Western Station with a billowing of steam from the blue and black and white painted locomotive. Trains usually run on time in the new China, but this one was early. Our hosts, members of the Shanghai Bevolutionary Committee had not yet arrived, so the group of eight American journalists and writers,
enthralled by the very fact of being ín Shanghai, horseplayed on the platform like a bunch of kids.
Susan Sontag, the writer, struck
a
Marlene
Dietrich pose from that film and said "you have to
have known many men
to get the nickname
'Shanghai Lil.' " Phil Stern, who wrote The Rape of the Taxpayer
and The Great Treasury Baid and who is
a
philanthropist of sorts, engaged in a strictly one-sided butearnestconversation with a porter who spoke no English and whose monthly pay was about g2O.
Reg Murphy, then editor of the Atlanta Con-
stitution, now editor and publisher of the San Francísco Examine¡, continued his running corruption of the English language speech ability of yeh Chin, on leave from the Hsinhua news agency to act as one of
the ¡nterpreters for our group.
The clock in the station tower was just gonging 6 a.m, of a cold, gray day and here was Murphy teaching Yeh the "correct" Georgia twang of ,'y'all c'mon, let's eat." The journey from Peking had been broken by a stay of a few days in Sian, the ancient capital. Despite the 14
When my visa for travel to the people's Republic of China was approved, my Shanghai-born wife Linda, of course, wanted me to try to look up her father. She had not seen him or spoken to him since lgbO when she and some other members of the family left Hong Kong shortly after the Communist takeover. Despite all the news reports of openings to the West, China's much-talked-of Bamboo Curtain was st¡ll a reality in February of 1973; especially when it
to communicating with relatives. Mail ex_ changes are now allowed but personal overseas telephone calls are still strictly regulated usually forcame
bidden.
And my father-in-law, Chen Cheng-nuen, then 73, was a rather special case. As a wealthy construction executive before the Communist takeover, he was stripped of his property and listed as a member of the "national bourgeosie,, that Peking has tried to "reconstruct,, and ',reeducate" as part of the new society. It was apparent that my father-in-law would take a lot of "reconstructing." He did business and socialized with foreigners, owned several cars, and during the course of an active life had eight different wives and concubines. My wife was the daughter of his first legal wife and the old man's favorite daughter (l con_ tend to this day that he spoiled her); meeting him would be quite an adventure, I thought. The search began in Ottawa, Canada in the
summer of 1972. When my passport application was presented, I also submitted the father-in-law,s name and the name of my wife's brother, Chen Hung-chen, 37, and their addresses. I repeated my request to v¡sit my relatives in meetings with Chinese authorities in Kwangchow and Peking. At each place the officials
were very cooperative, Yeh Chin took a special interest in the case. ,,This will be very interesting for me as well," he said. I still do not know how many late night phone calls he
made as we travelled across China, making arrangements to set up the meeting. Yeh and I hit ¡t off well on the trip and like so many friendships among journalists, ours was forged partly
during rather intense periods over liquid
refreshments. One night, at a banquet in Sian thrown
by local newspaper executives, Yeh tr¡ed to get me drunk. He should have realized that the possibility of his winning such a challenge was remote since he weighed only about 140 pounds, while I came in at over 1 95 and had something of a track record for endurance in such contests. Our toasts with the fiery mao-taí had gone well past the dozen mark when I noted out ofthe corner of my eye that Yeh had finally succumbed and was filling his glass secretly with water instead of the clear mao-tai. He was proposing the next challenge-toast when I
called him on it.
"Funny how the water makes those bubbles in
your mao-tai glass," I said. Everyone at the table laughed and Yeh took his exposure good-naturedly. But his ears were about as red as the political banner that hung over the doorway proclaiming "Peoples of the world unite to defeat the
imperialist aggressors." The next morning, Yeh's dark mood confirmed that
even Communists get hangovers. By the time we reached Shanghai, representat¡ves of the Revolutionary Committee there had checked the dossier on my father-in-law and had already visited him and confirmed he was in good health. The authorities, I should mention, knew earlier that the old man had a "foreign son-in-law" and that I was a newsman. A member of the Street Committee
(lowest state-run administrative unit) where my
father-in-law lives had come to the house before the China visit of President Nixon and said: "Your foreign son-in-law may be coming with this group. Make the necessary preparations to make a good impression." I didn't make the Nixon trip and, as it turned out, had a better opportunity to see China for a longer period, and in more depth, on this later journey. After we had been in Shanghai for a few days, Yeh
came around to my room one morning in the very comfortable Peace Hotel, the former Cathay Hotel owned by Sir Victor Sassoon during Shanghai's more adventuresome days. Noel Coward put the finishing touches in Private Lives while a guest at the Cathay. "lt's all set," Yeh said, every bit as excited as I was. "Your relatives will come here tonight around seven." Part of my intention in meeting my father-in-law was to arrange an overseas phone call to my w¡fe, who was at the time back in our home in Alexandria, Va. I knew that father-in-law had been unable to make or receive overseas calls previously. But I also knew that the authorities would not stop me from placing a call. So I filled out the required form for the call, and awaited the arrival of my relatives. At 7:O5 p.m., I heard Yeh's knock at the door. "Neilan, your father-in-law and brother-in-law are here to see you," he said. I shook hands with the old man and he clapped me on the arm and said "We finally meet. lt's good to see
you." He was wearing a plain gray Mao-type tunic under a topcoat, which he removed along with his scarf and cap. His English was still very good, even though he hadn't used it much in the last 20 years. Brother-in-law Chen Hung-cheng was there also with his wife and we greeted each other warmly. His wife's half-sister, T'ai-li, was with them. Yeh spotted her immediately as being very attractive and placed his chair next to hers. She was 26, unmarried, and was wearing a bright red jacket. Her hairdo was arranged more stylishly than the u'sual "Mao-bob" seen on most women. As I had sensed earlier, Shanghai people tend to dress much more colorfully, and seern more anímated and more aggressively curious in the street, than Chinese in other cities which I visited. We exchanged pleasantries and at the last minute I told Yeh about the overseas phone call.
"Why not? lt's a good idea," he said. We sat in the hotel room, sipping tea and talking about relatives scattered all over the world. Some of the conversation was in English; at other times Yeh
'We Wear Skirts in The Summerr' Said T'ai-li. Her Beauty Would Turn Young Men's Heads Anywhere in The World.t translated
the relative's comments made in
the
Shanghai dialect. After a while the telephone on the bedside table rang. The Shanghai operator said the call to Alexandria, Virginia, United States of America, was ready. "Go ahead, please." I spoke to my wife briefly and told her everything was set, that her father was sitting beside me anxious
to talk to her. The old man took the phone, spoke my wife's Chinese name twice happily "Kwei-li, Kwei-li. ." and
then he started to cry tears of joy. lt was the first time they had talked in over 20 years. On the other errd of the line, across the Pacific Ocean thousands of miles away, my wife was crying also.
After the old man had talked for about
five
minutes, he handed the phone to my brother-in-law who spoke emotionally to his sister (my wife) whom he had last seen as a little girl. While the brother-in-law was talking on the phone,
Yeh put his arm around the old man and saíd something in Chinese. The short Hsinhua man was obviously moved by the situation, He later told me that he treasured the experience; a rare East-West family meeting.
After the phoning was finished, we poured tea and talked, warmed in the aftermath of the overseas call 15
that had emotionally spanned years as well as miles. Everyone was pleased that the call had come off so
well. I took from my suitcase two
calendar wristwatches that I had brought as gifts. I gave one to my father-in-law and one to my brother-in-law. "Just what I need," said the old man. He held up his old watch; "l've had this one for over 40 years."
He was wearing a Mao button on his padded, woolen jacket. "ln the old days I often wore Western suits," he said, laughing, "Not any more. I also wore a Rotary (Club) pin instead of this Mao pin." All of the relatives were dressed well and warmly. Brother-in-law's tunic was of darker gray than the old man's. His wife wore a brown jacket. Both of the ladies were wearing trousers - I didn't see a skjrt on a Chinese woman during my entire 28 days in China. "We wear skirts in the summer sometimes," said
T'ai-li. Her beauty would turn young men's heads anywhere in the world. At the time of my visit she was a worker at the Shanghai Tractor Factory. She proudly said she was No 3 in ping-pong at the factory. I asked her about marriage; after all, there must be a lot of young men at the tractor factory. "There are 2,0OO men workers there," she said
and added with a laugh of feigned haughtiness. "None of them appeals to me."
Although the younger members of the Chen family had all gone to college in the pre- "liberation" days, this new generation of youngsters in the family hasn't had the chance. Because of their "bourgeosie" standing, they are assigned after middle (high) school to jobs in factories. And of course they must observe the
guidelines that "suggest" late marriage for both young men and women. More attractive jobs were reserved for offspring of workers, peasants and
soldiers. One of the young cousins, Ping-Ping, whom I met the following day was an acupuncturist and at 27 still had not married. The relatives had brought many gifts for me to take back to the United States. For the adults there was silk brocade, lacquerware and carv¡ngs. For my two young daughters, there were ceramic
figurines of the "White Haired Girl," a revoluntionary heroine. lt was a gift from the younger cousins and nephews and nieces for whom the revolutionary characters are their counterparts of our Mother Goose and Dr Suess. The following day I arranged to go to the family home, which is the working quarters of the former
family mansion in the French Ouarter of the old Shanghai. The big house is now a community center. The old man's room and the upstairs rooms of his niece - "Mary" was her name when it was permissi-
ble
to
have foreign name
-
were neat, but rather
frugally furnished. Under a glass plate on a table were several photographs of relatives around the world there was even one, incongruously it seemed, of Swarthmore-graduate Auntie lrene, the Hong Kong 16
advertisting executive, wearing a miniskirt. We spent
the morning taking photographs that would record the event of my visit for relatives scattered in half-adozen countries. The sun did not seem to want to cooperate at first, but finally enough light was found to take two rolls of film indoors and some more shots in the modest garden.
Everyone was quite excited
-
including the
neighbors. Several hundred children and adults pressed around the car outside; it was a rare event for an American visitor to come to this lane, A couple of the kids shouted "Hello" in English. All of the adult relatives were given the day off from their jobs to spend time with the visitor from the United States. That evening I was invited (along with Yeh) by my relatives to dine at a well-known restaurant on Nanking Road. The street was the former capitalist business center of Shanghai. Our party was to be l2
in all and there was the
usual crowd
of
curious
Chinese at curbside as Yeh and I alighted from the grey Shanghai-made sedan outside the restaurant. The restaurant was clean and modestly decorated. ln the old days, there were "Drink Coca Cola" signs on the walls near the entrance hallway, as well as traditional paintings and calligraphy. Now there were Mao slogans instead of capitalist consumer advertisements. The food turned out to be a notch below the banquet fare we had been getting on our trip, but it was very good and it was a pleasure to be able to eat in a restaurant without the trappings of a banquet. Near the end of the meal I began to feel that the relatives were going overboard in entertaining me and that dinner might be very expensive. I knew that the old man received a pension of about $45 monthly from the state, and that brother-in-law made perhaps
(Continued frorn Page 9.)
colored lights and a white spot focused on a revolving mirrored
to resume
service.
ln the Saigon River, the twisting
ball. They sat at long tables drinking
stream that changes clirection here four times a day with the ocean
tea during a two-hour program of
tides, one rarely sees two ships un-
Vietnamese songs and dances and a jazz version of The Song of the Volga Boatmen. Across the intersection where
der way at the same time. Those
that do appear are usually
Vietnamese, Soviet or East European.
stationery, Bic pens, shoes, plastic sandals, to¡let articles, U.S. Army gear and clothing, drafting supplies, embroidered blouses, padlocks, flashlights, hypodermic needles and surgical instruments.
Children of all ages, often in blue-and-white uniforms and generally looking scrubbed, walk or
once stood a huge statue of a South Vietnamese soldier, in a former bank building, is an exhibition hall for Vietnamese export goods. These include hardwoods, spices and handicrafts, as well as
bicycle
to
school
in morning
and
afternoon shifts all over the city. Parks, coffeeshops and motionpicture theaters are crowded in the early evenings. People still flock to
the beach at Vung Tau by bus or
television sets and a O-horsepower diesel engine made mostly from
motorbike. Young men and women workers
worked.
sewing machine copied from a classic Singer model and priced
The dinner bill came to about 92b. I was about to reach into my pocket for my roll of Yuan currency to help pay the bill but I hesítated. lt
evening in the Majestic Hotel - now the Cuu Long, or Nine Dragons - for a company dinner. lt began sedately, with the guests seated at
where wealth and status were re-
$60 a month in salary at the factory where
he
would have been too gauche a gesture. By Chinese
custom I was the guest, a family member, from a far place and should not pay. Yeh assured me later I had done the right thing in not trying to play big spender. The old man made several toasts wh¡ch we drank with orange soda and beer. He directed one at yeh. "Welcome and thanks, You are the only non-family member at the party. And we are glad to have you here." The car assigned to me was waiting at the curb after the dinner - along with about 2OO curious Chinese. I said goodbye to father-in-law and brotherin-law and insisted that they take the car back home.
The last thing the old man said to me was "l am getting old. I hope I can see my daughter again." Then Yeh and l, along with T'ai-li and ping-ping and another brother named T'a-ming walked back
toward the riverfront, half a mile down Nanking Road. (Please see page I 8.)
in a
Japanese parts ¡n joint ventures, Another item is a "Simco" treadle about $3OO.
Old Saigon's Cercle
Sportif
workers, providing swimming, tennis, table terinis and volley ball at nominal rates. lt appeared to be widely used and well run, although two groups were playing tennis on courts that lacked nets. Airport and harbor are quieter
now. Tan Son Nhut, said at the
war's height to be the
second
busiest a¡rport in the world (after Chicago's O'Hare), is clean and orderly but drowsy. lnstead of Western airliners, one sees mostly the red-flagged Air Viet Nam planes and those of the Soviet Union, the
People's Republic
of
China
and
Laos. Air France is said to be about
one
long tables. After much beer and rice wine,
,
quired for membership, has been turned into a sports club for
glass factory gathered
Occasionally a gray Vietnamese gun-boat goes to or frorn an upstream navy base. T¡ny towboats
often pull three or four wooden barges, each with its tall rudder post and tiller that reaches to a flying bridge above the cargo. For all the change, the city retains much of its old character. Crowds of people still eat theír meals of rich noodle soup at tiny sidewalk tables and buy food,
however, many were tipsy and giggling, several were staggering, and at least two were sick. When the party broke up and the noisy crowd headed for the elevators, a gray-haired official sternly mot¡oned for silence, tapping the loudest ones on the shoulder and motioning toward a group of foreigners eating nearby and taking it all in.
He clapped his hand over one young man's mouth to stop his yelling, then slapped him good
clothing and household supplies in
naturedly on the back and smilingly
where prices are uncontrolled and
sent him on his way. The incident seemed
the noisy jam-packed markets, bargaining is expected.
Street merchants still
hawk
sunglasses and spread out arrays of
to symbolize the light touch by a firm hand that Communist Vietnam is using for its problem
city.
I
17
T'a-ming was 25, worked in a factory and liked to swim in any weather. Walking on what used to be the famous Shanghai Bund along the Whangpoo River, we noted dozens of
on
couples holding hands and snuggling
park
benches.
I even saw one young man carrying a guitar, the first I had seen anywhere in China. All too soon it was time for me to go back to the hotel and for them to head for their homes. T'ai-li said they had been so excited about my visit since reading of my arrival in China in the Peking People's Daily, which is posted ín all the factories and work units across the countfy.
The flow of letters between Shanghai anfl Alexandria has continued since then, actual evidence.of a loosening of the controls that once prevented all interchange.
My wife sent bottles of v¡tamin capsules to her father regularly. They were all received, except for
one, which was sent back without
explanation.
Probably a bureaucratic snafu, we guessed.
Father Chen remained in good health until late 1976 although he seldom ventured outs¡de the house unless the weather was good, ac'cording to letters. Brother Chen wrote that he likes the bicycle which I sent him as a gift. Here's how that was arranged: I asked another relative who was visiting China from New York this last summer to make the purchase. She deposited the money - about $70 - with a Chinese bank and the Shanghai-made bicycle was
to brother Chen at a downtown shop. I might have sent in a foreign-made bike but
handed
the
family had already recieved one this year (only one foreign-made bicycle gift is allowed per veat, per familyl from another relative. T'ai-li is the family member with the most news to report recently. ln 1973 I had written about her beauty. Judging by a selection of snapshots she sent us recently, she is becoming even more attractive. Late marriages are encouraged as part of national policy. Tai-li was married in December 1974, to Lok Wein-ming, a Shanghai mechanical engineer. Their had planned to marry the previous October but a severe bout with the flu had caused T'ai-li to post-
We know frorn 32 yeara of experience thaÈ ñrov¡ng doeBn,t have to ba. a clìaotic business. We'll corne Èo your- home and give you a realistic quotat¡on, and ¡f youtne aatisfied witlî tlîat werll erxperrÈly pack and conÈaineF¡se ycrur poeeessions and insure tfìem ¡f you wietr. Wer'll provide door-to-door
you with experienced servicer...anywhene in Èhe world.
Call Jol-rn Moore aÈ,5-714?37 carch h¡rn at the FCc.,. for Èfìat smolother move.
ot-
in the world do so many travelers like the Reader's Digest?
pone the wedding. We had read that more and more young Chinese women were wear¡ng dresses and skírts, instead of trousers, and the snapshots which T'ai-li sent along
confirmed this. 1
T'aili
gave birth
to a baby girl
in
976.
Letters from Shanghai are not too detailed political subjects are not mentioned, There
and are,
however, references to sat¡sfaction that U.S.-Chinese
relations are improving, One thing that surprised me was the loosening up, at least in one instance, of the ban on import of foreign periodicals. Although neither Time no¡ Newsweek - and cer-
tainly not magazines like Playboy - are found on news-stands in China, some foreign books are allowed entry in "special cases." One such was a copy of The Future of the Ch¡na Market, a study exploring the prospects for Sino-American trade which I co-authored with another American journalist. Charles R. Smith.
The SrnoothclF Mover lets ycrLt en¡oy yolJ!- trtctve.
TtA/hy
The book contained some pointed political references and observations that were not in step with Peking policy. But the book was allowed to reach the family in Shanghai through the ordinary mail. One family member translated the book to Chinese so the others could read it. Tai Ming was married last year and had a baby boy
this past spring. Ping-Ping was also married last year and that event became a family reunion of sorts with relatives from New York and Hong Kong attending and a splendid three-table wedding banquet was held in a private room of a hotel near the old race course. Father Chen passed away January 20, 1977 at age
77. A memorial service was held and
relatives
some coming long d¡stances - to pay respect before and after cremation. The letters from Shanghai continue, speaking of family matters, questions and statements from the young members on hopes and aspirations for China's
gathered
-
future and invitations to visit Shanghai again whenever it is possible. t Ed Neilan waa formerly based in Hong Kong
Probably because we're so easy to read. In light installments. An article or two at a time. We're lots of fun, too. Our pages are peppered with humor. With many articles about the exciting cities and countries of the world. The Digest is an international magazine. That's why we aÞpeal to internàtional travelers. Digest is also handy to carry. To read at
airports, aboard jetliners, in hotel rooms. And, at home. If you're looking for travelers, just look at who's reading the Reader's Digest. Reader's Digest is the best-selling magazine at Asian newsstands (where travelers pick up their reading material).
Bought at Newsstands Reader's Digest Asia Edition
Philippines 27,576
Time 7,333
9,2& 2,717 Malaysia 9,612 4,478 Korea lndonesia 10,400 5,520 4,500 3,650 Pakistan Singapore 4,560 2,392 2,æ0 965 Taiwart 2,200 1,616 Thailand 4,(X)0 5,634 Japan Hong Kong/Macau 2,050 2,291 1,600 558 Sri Lanka
TOTAL:
78.,m C7,1il
Newsweek
6,800
2,1æ 1,948 5,000
2,95 2,2æ 1,1 16
1,700 7,æ1 1,951
2æ 3l,061
Source: ABC Analysis of Paid Circulat¡on Reader's Digest, Dec 1976 issue. T¡me, July 19, 1976 ¡ssue Nemwk, Ocl 25, 1976 issue
T)eaderb
\Drgest
is good for business. Yours.
and was a HKFCC member. He is now editor of
The Asia Maí|.
Cogyright 1977,Thc Ada MCt
't9
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