An Enthusiast in China

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 788, 27 August 1954, Page 12

An Enthusiast in China

JOURNEY TO NEW CHINA, by Margaret Garland; Caxton Press, 21/-,

(Reviewed by

David

Hall

thusiasts or detractors. Mrs. Garland is an enthusiast. She was the guest of the New China Government as a New Zealand delegate to the 1952 Peking "Peace" conference (the inverted commas. are an indication both of my prejudiced mind and of the vagueness of the interests represented at the conference), and also made a conducted tour with Rewi Alley and interpreters at her elbow. In this book Mrs. Garland describes her experiences with zest and colour. Her account of some phases of Chinese art is particularly good, and the frequent felicitous descriptions of a scene, a person or an artifact can make her pages glow. She saw nothing nasty anywhere (except in Hong Kong). Everyone was’ honest, industrious, charming, "peace"-loving and-better still-"‘peace"-delegate-loving. New enterprises are springing up everywhere; new housing estates are being built; rich merchants’ palaces have become créches or hospitals. Peasants at last own their own land. It is plain that Mrs. Garland found her visit to China a rewarding experience. She has written a lively and attractive account of it, at a level above gossip. It is heartening to have a general attitude of goodwill towards the New China-balancing internal reforms against international tensions — endorsed; for few-outside the U.S. State Department-cling to any substantial illusions about the Kuomintang rump on the island of Formosa, and most New Zealanders share Mr. Webb’s opinion that mainland China should have the United Nations seat, But is everything in the garden quite so lovely? Pag ten kee: attract enThere are points where the record is -shall we say?-a trifie blurred, Consider such a dictum as this: "In all her long history China never has invaded another country.’ Does this comfort the Tibetans? Again, Hong Kong is a dreadful place, overcrowded, slummy, full of vice, policemen and thieves, but the writer herself reminds us that the population of that very small territory has been augmented by about two million persons who preferred to leave the New China. Germ warfare has to be served up once again. A passion for justice and fair play can be just as unbalanced and one-eyed. as a blind prejudice against Communism. Undoubtedly it needed moral courage to lift the bamboo curtain, but to congratulate oneself on that courage only draws attention to the heavy investment one has made in the validity of one’s enthusiasms. "Peace" is indeed a potent word when it can turn on banquets, special trains and a standard of living for foreign guests at least equal to their own and far higher than that of the country itself. How all this was provided may be explained by such an allusion as this: "They had contributed fourteen million yen fronr the district to the peace movement because they said

they realised’ how important it was to preserve peace." In the words of 1984 and all that-yes, indeed.