Peking - A Novel of China s Revolution 1921-1978 (Grey, Anthony) (z-lib.org)

the last time on his magnificent array of antique bronze, 3adc, and
porcelain. But the sadness of that recollection gave way in turn to a feeling
of pleasure as he saw again in his mind’s eye the slender-necked Tang ewer
that he had taken reverently in his hands on that last evening in the small
museum, Its narrow spout had been fashioned in the shape of a phoenix,
and he remembered the passion that had seized him as he held it out,
telling his father how he yearned for China to rise, phoenix like, from the
ashes of its turmoil. Nearly fifty years had passed since then, but as Chiao
listened to Teng’s brusque, uncomplicated discourse a feeling that had
recently been growing in him became an intuitive certainty: after much
suffering, a long, terrible night was ending. A new’ China was at last
rising from the old; many great difficulties still lay ahead, but a new dawn,
he was sure, was beginning to break.

Postscript

A dawn on Easter Sunday, 1936, Alfred Bosshardt, to whom this novel is
affectionately dedicated, was released from captivity by China’s Red
Army, near Kunming, in Yunnan province. He had trudged 2,500 miles as a
prisoner of General Ho Lung’s Second Front Army on the Long March. I
was privileged to meet him for the first time in Manchester, England, in
1983 as I began to research the historical background to my story. A
largely unsung hero, still living in Manchester in his ninety-first year,
Alfred Bosshardt is the only surviving Westerner with firsthand experience
of the Long March, and recollections that he has shared with me during
numerous meetings in England and Switzerland provided many invaluable
insights and much inspiration. Without his help, Peking could scarcely
have been written in this form. A step-by-step account of his astonishing
survival, dictated from his sickbed in Kunming, was published by his
missionary organization in 1936 under the title The Restraining Hand. An
abridged version of this can be found in a wider autobiography, published
by Hodder and Stoughton in England in 1973, entitled The Guiding Hand.
Both books are a moving testament to the faith that helped him survive.
For his generosity and his friendship I owe Alfred Bosshardt a very special
debt of gratitude.
I am also much indebted to Mr. Ray Smith of Wheaton, Illinois, whose late
father, the Reverend Howard Smith, was serving as a pioneer missionary
in western China in the year the Long March began. Howard Smith was
taken prisoner in Szechuan — also by Ho Lung’s Second Front Army — in
May 1934 and was marched more than eight hundred miles in fifty-two
days before making a dramatic escape. Ray Smith, then a very young
child, and his mother were also captives for a few hours, and private
accounts of these experiences, in addition to letters and photographs that
Ray Smith was kind enough to show me provided another wonderfully
clear perspective through history’s murky haze.
Two other courageous American missionaries, a young married couple,
were captured and tragically beheaded by Communist troops in Anhwei

province in December 1934. An account of their ordeal is given in The
Triumph of John and Betty Stam, by Mrs. Howard Taylor, published in
Philadelphia in 1935. Their very young baby miraculously survived the
ordeal, and echoes of this and other real experiences reverberate in my
imaginary story. But none of the fictional characters in Peking, it should
be emphasized, is meant to portray or represent any living person. In this
connection I should also add that nobody should expect to find any sign of
Chentai, Paoshan, or Sanmo on genuine maps of China — at least not in
the places I have indicated. All three of these settlements are make-believe
and exclusive to this story.
No book, I suspect, is ever entirely the work of one single individual, and
my sincere thanks are due to several friends and specialists in the China
field who offered vital encouragement and assistance with the writing of
this novel. Sinologist Roderick MacFarquhar, former neighbor in London,
onetime broadcasting colleague, and now professor of government and
director of the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at
Harvard University, helped enormously by providing essential historical
pointers and scouring his extensive private library for Long March
memorabilia at the outset to get me launched on my lengthy narrative trek.
Dick Wilson, former editor of The China Quarterly and author of many
outstanding books on the Far East — including The Long March 1935 —
kindly made essential volumes available to me from his personal library.
Broadcaster Joseph Hang-tai Yen was equally generous with precious
books and time given to translating Chinese documents; Dr. Jung Chang,
author of Madame Sun Yat-sen, illuminated early drafts with
perspicacious comments; and Brian and Alison Senior willingly
contributed their considerable background knowledge of Hong Kong. Also,
Madame Nien Cheng, the brave author of Life and Death in Shanghai,
which describes her own terrifying Cultural Revolution ordeal, helped
personally to put that great city in perspective for mc during the chaos of
the late I9óos, and I salute and thank her most warmly.
In London, librarians at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the
Royal Institute of International Affairs (and especially the staff of the
institute’s Press Cuttings Library>, the British Library, and the London
Library unfailingly rendered patient and painstaking help. Much essential
material on the Long March (which, when it is out of print, is not always
easy to obtain) emanates from the Foreign Languages Press, Peking.

Among such publications are: Stories of the Long March (1960), which I
first read during an enforced stay in Peking; The Long March —
Eyewitness Accounts (1963); On the Long March with Chairman Mao by
Chen Chang-feng (1972); Recalling the Long March by Liu Po-cheng and
Others (1978); and On the Long March As Guard to Chou En-lai by Wei
Kuo-lu (1978). Otto Braun, the luckless German Comintern adviser sent to
China by Moscow, added a polemical dimension to the story by publishing
A Comintern Agent in China 1932—1939, which contains some unique
detail, and III 1985 Harrison E. Salisbury threw significant new light on
the epic Communist migration after retracing much of the route
personally. His book The Long March — The Untold Story includes many
riveting interviews with aging Long March veterans — but all these
publications provided important color and detail of a fascinating historical
episode.
Trying to draw an orderly line through the disorder of China’s revolution
over the past seventy years or so is not easy: among the great lexicon of
China books that helped mc do this, Ross Terrill’s perspicacious biography
Mao stood out. Jonathan Spence’s Gate of Heavenly Peace, which deals
with the experiences of intellectuals during China’s early revolutionary
upheavals, also contains unique insights. Agnes Smedley’s splendid
biography of Chu Teh — The Great Road— and her descriptions of 1930S
China in such volumes as Chinese Destinies and Portraits of Chinese
Women in Revolution give invaluable firsthand impressions, which bring
the period brilliantly to life. Robert Payne’s books, particularly Journey to
Red China, China Awake, and A Rage for China, also convey singular
glimpses of China’s revolutionary leaders. Similarly, Edgar Snow’s
writings, especially his classic Red Star Over China, along with Nym
Wales’s vivid Yenan biographies of the men and women who led the
revolution — Red Dust — are seminal reading for anyone wishing to
understand the long march to power of Communism in China. Three other
books — Paul A. Cohen’s China and Christianity, Christopher Hibbert’s
The Dragon Wakes, and Harry A. Franck’s compendious Roving Through
Southern China — were wonderfully informative about China in transition
from imperial to modern times. For more recent events, Rod
MacFarquhar’s three-volume work, The Origins of the Cultural
Revolution, details the slow-burning development of the cataclysm with
unmatched authority.

In another dimension, an indefatigable but ever-youthful veteran of many
long literary campaigns, my Boston editor, William D. Phillips, made as
great a contribution to this novel as he did to Sagen — which was very
considerable indeed; in London, Victoria Petrie-Hay also gave sustained
and valuable editorial assistance. Susan Stewart typed and word-processed
the last of three books for me with typical speed and efficiency before
going off to become Susan Poulson — she is already greatly missed; Brian
McVay and Kenneth Brown provided research assistance that turned out to
be vital, as did Simon and Liz Woodside; and others who gave generously
of their time and expertise include Ged Lavery, Senator the Reverend Peter
Manton of Jersey, Christopher Manton, and Chinese friends Sun Shyi-ren,
Tseng Yung-kwang, Yang Sy-kung, and Wang Chihfa. I’m indebted in
different ways also to staunch friends Vergil Berger, Ian Macdowall, Kim
Davenport, David Alexander, Bob Wareham, and Geoffrey Smyth. In
Peking I learned important lessons about the kinder side of human nature
— which I hope are reflected in some ways in these pages — from
“Hsiao” Kao, “Lao” Chiao (since deceased), “Lao” Wang, and Mrs. Hou. I
take this belated opportunity to express my thanks with all sincerity. The
nearest and dearest of my helpmates, Shirley Grey, again played a central
and indispensable role in bringing this book to fruition, reading, advising,
evaluating, and encouraging at every step taken through successive drafts
of the six-thousand-mile manuscript.
Kind encouragement and guidance were also offered by Professor Chang
Lit-sen, now of Lexington, Massachusetts. Professor Chang, a church
minister and author of more than a hundred publications on Chinese law,
politics, and religion, made me aware of one of the most intriguing minor
facts to emerge from three years of research. In June 1978, in Toronto, Dr.
Chang baptized as a Christian one of the cofounders with Mao Tse-tung of
China’s Communist Party. He was Chang Kuo-tao, the forceful general
who had headed the Fourth Front Army and challenged Mao head-on for
the leadership of the Communist movement at Fupien during a crucial
stage of the Long March in the far west. General- Chang, who defected to
the Kuomintang in 1938 after being worsted in the power struggle, called
Dr. Chang to Toronto specially to carry out the baptism – and died a
Christian believer in Canada a few months later.

About The Author

Career
Detention in China (1967 - 1969)
While working for Reuters in Beijing in July 1967 he was confined to the
basement of his house by the Chinese government, ostensibly for spying,
but really in retaliation for the jailing of eight left-wing journalists who
had violated emergency regulations in Hong Kong. China demanded the
release of the eight before Grey would be released. While the eight were
eventually released, China then demanded the release of a further 13
Chinese jailed in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong government refused. Grey
was able to communicate by mail with his mother and girlfriend back in
England, but was only allowed two 20-minute visits by British consular
officials in the first 17 months of his confinement, and was never formally
charged.
He was released in October 1969 after 27 months of captivity. Upon his
return to Britain he was awarded the "Journalist of the Year" prize for 1969
at the IPC National Press awards, and an OBE.
Later Career
He published various stories and articles in such magazines as Playboy,
Punch and The Illustrated London News. Between 1974 and 1979 he was a
presenter on Twenty-four Hours, a daily international affairs program on
the BBC's World Service.
He produced television documentaries for the British TV stations BBC and
ATV World. These include Return to Peking in which he described changes
in China since his imprisonment, and Return to Saigon, in which he visited
Vietnam for the first time, subsequent to his successful novel Saigon.
In the late 1980s Grey's experience as a political hostage led him to found
Hostage Action Worldwide, which worked for the release of other political
hostages, in particular John McCarthy, Brian Keenan, Terry Waite and
others held by Islamic groups in the Middle East.
From the 1990s Grey took an interest in UFOs. He produced a three-part
documentary in 1996-1997 for the BBC World Service entitled 'UFO's -

fact, fiction or fantasy?'. His conclusion was that there is overwhelming
evidence for visitations to earth by extra-terrestrials.
Personal Life
In 1970 Grey married Shirley McGuinn (16 December 1932 - 24
November 1995), his girlfriend at the time of his imprisonment in China.
They had two daughters, and divorced in 1992. From 1969 to 1973 the
Greys lived in Jersey, and subsequently in London, West Sussex and
Norwich.
Publications
Grey's publications include:
Fiction / Novels
Some Put Their Trust in Chariots (1973)
Crosswords from Peking (1975)
The Bulgarian Exclusive (1976)
The Chinese Assassin (1978)
Saigon (1982)
The Prime Minister Was a Spy (1983)
Peking: A Novel of Chinas Revolution 1921-1978 (1988)
The Bangkok Secret (1990) based around the real-life mysterious shooting
death of Thailand's King Rama VIII
The Naked Angels (1990)
A Gallery of Nudes (1992)
Tokyo Bay (1996)
The German Stratagem (1998)
Short story collections
A Man Alone (1972)
What is the Universe In? (2003)
Non-Fiction
Hostage in Peking (1970) recounting his experiences in Chinese captivity
Quest for Justice: Towards Homosexual Emancipation (1992)
Speaking of Sex: The Limits of Language (1993)
Hostage in Peking Plus (2008)
The Hostage Handbook: The Secret Diary of a Two-Year Ordeal in China
(2009)