Public Diamond - Beijing Diary

One morning in March 1948, the telephone rang loudly from my home in Philadelphia. It was a call from Washington, D.C.

“Are you ready to go to China as a Fulbright Fellow?”

The voice on the telephone asked the above question.

"We would like to know the decision immediately, if possible, so that we can announce today that the Fulbright project has begun."

I suppressed my surprise a little. At the same time, I remembered how, during the war, I used to do this kind of thing without any signs or drums, without any signs or drums.

"Ha... if you go, it will be a great pleasure for me. Please let me know the details."

I wrote to Washington about this matter in November 1947, shortly after the signing of the Fulbright Program Agreement between the United States and China. I wrote to them about a project and expressed my desire to go to China. Some time later, I received a reply that the Project Board was interested in my proposals and that the application forms would be sent to me as soon as they were completed.

Weeks passed like this. Nothing happened. The next thing I knew, the phone call came quickly. After that phone call, the application forms arrived.

And so began our year-long adventure in China, a journey of adventure. We were assigned to sail on a British ship that was to sail around the world for the first time. The ship would depart from New York and visit West Coast ports such as Manila, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tianjin, so we decided to save time by taking the train to Los Angeles and waiting for the ship.

When we found the ship, we learned that it was not a new ship as we thought, but a large aircraft carrier built for the British Navy in 1944. After the war, it was sold to a British shipping company based in Hong Kong and converted into a cargo ship in Northampton, Virginia.

When we arrived in Los Angeles, the ship's engine was broken, so we had to wait for two days and were only able to board the ship on July 7th.

The two rooms provided for us were spacious and clean. The food was...

The ship was also reasonably fast. The speed of sailing to San Francisco was also quite fast. However, when we docked in San Francisco harbor and made the usual inspection of the ship's engine room, we found that one of the bearings was broken, so we had to turn back. It was only on July 14, just one day after we left Philadelphia, that we were able to leave through the Golden Gate Bridge.

After leaving, one night and four days later, I was jolted awake by a sudden jolt from Galea's elbow.

"The ship's engine is stopped."

As soon as he woke up, he heard Galea's panicked voice. Then Galea turned on the light in the room, and the light suddenly lit up, then slowly flickered and went out completely. The entire ship was dark and pitch black, and the noisy engines were silent.

Suddenly, there was a sound of movement and shouting, "Fireman...Fireman..." We pulled on our coats and shirts and crept out of the room onto the deck. I looked at my watch by the light of my lighter and saw that it was 4:15 in the morning. The entire ship was pitch black and motionless.

The emotional shock they felt when they realized that their only reliance, the ship, had suddenly turned into a large, lifeless object, and that the nearest shore was more than a thousand miles away, was immense.

Soon after the sound of rattling and people coming from the engine room below deck, two sailors hurried to the top of one of the masts and hung two red lanterns. The lanterns were used to signal that the ship was in danger.

No matter how much the signal was given, there seemed to be no other ship within a hundred miles, so the signal was useless.

We were climbing up and down the deck, talking in whispers (it's strange how people get quiet and even speak in whispers when faced with such an event) about whether or not the ship's mechanics would be able to fix it, and about the chances that tugboats would come and tow us to Hawaii.

In the early morning, the ship's only lights, the lanterns, had been removed and replaced with giant black balls of fabric. The seabirds that had been flying around since leaving San Francisco now swarmed around the ship. They swooped and swooped down on the calm sea, seemingly investigating the sudden calm of the ship.

After about four hours, fortunately, the engines started working again and the ship was able to leave again, so we were able to land. However, less than an hour later, the engines stopped again.

This time, the engine was restarted after about an hour and we were able to continue sailing. We had experienced this type of shipwreck and sinking at least four or five times. Every time the engine stopped, the sea was calm and the waves were calm, so we were lucky.

No one can say for sure why the ship broke down. Every time it broke down, every time it looked for the fault, it always turned out to be a fault. The first time it broke down, the first time it was a problem with the generator, the second time it was a problem with the oil pump, and the last time it was a leak in the steam pipes.

The British officers on the ship countered, saying that every time the ship broke down, they were always firing people from the American shipyards, so why did we, working for such a prominent British shipping company, accept the repair of a ship that was not in satisfactory condition?

When we reached the tropical zone, the situation was even worse. The heat in the engine room was so unbearable that it spread to the deck that we could not walk on deck without shoes. The fact that the engine broke down every time the engine stopped working was also very disturbing. A few days before we reached Manila, the refrigerator burst and gas leaked out, causing it to stop working altogether. The refrigerator broke, causing the fish to rot, and the most important thing was that we could not get ice, which was a source of great discomfort. Not only us, but also the ship's officers began to complain. Apart from our family, there were only two other passengers on board, an elderly couple.

The couple were grocery store owners in a small town in northern Michigan, and their son had been a college roommate of the shipowner's wife, who had given the couple a ship's ticket to sail around the world.

They had lived in the small town all their lives and had never even visited a large city with a population of more than a few thousand. As they spent day after day in the Pacific Ocean, the men became increasingly frustrated and bored, complaining, "There's only water everywhere, not a single ship in sight, not a single airplane in sight."

They went along with the little boy, and when the refrigerator broke down, it was a disaster for him. It was an opportunity for him to show off his skills as a grocer, and every morning he would go to the refrigerator with a proud expression, giving instructions on which meat was going bad and which vegetables should be thrown away, which vegetables should be cooked quickly, and so on.

We arrived at Manila on August 1st, but the situation was not encouraging. We were all disappointed when we learned that the refrigerant gas for the refrigerator was expensive in the Philippines and would be purchased from Hong Kong, which was cheaper. When we left Manila five days later, the engine stopped shortly after leaving and remained adrift in the middle of the bay for four hours. This was due to the water running out of the boiler, and we later learned that if the engine was not stopped immediately, the entire engine would explode. The morale of the crew was also very low. During this failure, the ship's engineer, who claimed to be an expert in such matters, refused to go down to the engine room at all, saying that it was not his duty.

On August 7th, we docked at Hong Kong Port and immediately entered the company's dock. The next few days were the most miserable. The dock was noisy day and night with the sound of hammering, hammering, and welding. The temperature never dropped below 95-96. The problems of not having water and not having electricity were not small. It was not easy to carry water to the toilet.

We did not even think of going ashore. The cost was too high, and it was not easy to get a room because of the refugees from the mainland. So we endured all the hardships and continued to live on the ship, and on August 14th we were able to leave again. Although we were ready to leave a day earlier, we wasted time because it was the 13th and a good Friday. We left on the 14th, but as soon as we reached the sea, the engine stopped. This time, it was said that one of the engines had burned out. After 24 hours at anchor in the bay, three tugboats came and towed us back to the port we had come to hate.

This time, the repair was not just a superficial one, but a part of the engine had to be removed, so they had to drill through the belly pan, so no one could say whether it would take a week or two.

We had reached the limit of our tolerance. So we protested so strongly that in the end, the shipping company, unwilling to pay, even had to arrange plane tickets for the final journey to Beijing.

On August 19th, we left our luggage on board and departed. After a day's stopover in Shanghai, we arrived at the dusty Beijing airport on the morning of the 21st. It was exactly two months and six days since we had set sail from Philadelphia before we reached our destination.

Our cargo arrived in Beijing on October 9. Our ship broke down again on its second voyage from Hong Kong, and we had to return to the dock to be repaired. It was only on the third voyage that we were able to reach Beijing without any problems.

After spending about a year in China, when we were about to return, we happened to meet again and found that our ship was arriving in Tianjin on the day we were supposed to return. The ship's representative insisted that we return on that ship. Is it any wonder that we shook our heads and replied that we would return by air?