BEAUTIFUL PEKING

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 183, 20 August 1937, Page 14

BEAUTIFUL PEKING

Our Own Correspondent. )

The Chinese Centre of Culture JAPANESE 0PPRESSI0N

( From

' AUCKLAND, Last Night. ■ bpeaking at the Auckland liotary Club luncheon, Dr. 0. W. Parr, wiiu is now living in retirement in Auckland, gave some of the impressions he gained during fivo years spent in the vioini(v of Peking. The city, lie said, was amazingly beautiful with a spacious and artistie layout. After a brief period spent ,in Japan, where the population was congested, and the general air of xestriction and limitation gave one the idea of bcing a doll's country, he1 passed liirough poverty-stricken Chineso axeas and entered the spacious Tieauty of Pe'ldng. lt was a marvellous experience. That city, he said, had for hundreds of years heen .the' political capital of China and, still was the centre of ,Chincse culture. The one aim of ambitious Chinese parents was to send a son to Peking to he educated. A subsequent aim was to send him to some foveign country for a post-graduate course. At the University the standard of English was very high, and it was in common nse among the sludents who could not undcr&tand the varied dialects other students brought with them. Five years spent in this environment, said the speaker, were among the happiesfc of his life. The students were of a class equal to any in the world, and he was satisfiM that New Zealanders would do well to arrange for some to have their post-graduate studies in that country, possibly through an exchange system. Dr. Parr intimated quite frankly that having seea evidences of Japanese oppression in Not th China his sympathies in the present struggie were entirely with the Chinese. "Is the civilisod world," he asketl, "prepared for eeouomic reasons to allow Japan. to have her ruthless way in China'J Is New Zcaland, beeauso of the opportuuity to sell a few thousand bales of wool, prepared to refrain from catering a jrotest?" The t-pcaker emphasised that 95 per ccnt. of China 's dense population comprised agriculturists with no thought beyond the limit of their farms. A.s a nation their chief characteristics were honesty and a desire for peace and infinite patienco. Yet the modern trend seemcd to compol tho advanced section of this flpeace-loving people to Legin a development towards mililarism. Meanwhile the average Chinese would go ou his peaceful way satisfied that in the long run all would come right and, in fact, history had always shown the ability of the raee to absorb is conquorors.