Computer Gaming World Museum

 http://www.cgwmuseum.org/

Elegy Of Fortinbras - Zbigniew Herbert

for C.M.


Now that we’re alone we can talk prince man to man
though you lie on the stairs and see no more than a dead ant
nothing but black sun with broken rays
I could never think of your hands without smiling
and now that they lie on the stone like fallen nests
they are as defenceless as before The end is exactly this
The hands lie apart The sword lies apart The head apart
and the knight’s feet in soft slippers


You will have a soldier’s funeral without having been a soldier
the only ritual I am acquainted with a little
There will be no candles no singing only cannon-fuses and bursts
crepe dragged on the pavement helmets boots artillery horses drums drums I know nothing exquisite
those will be my manoeuvers before I start to rule
one has to take the city by the neck and shake it a bit


Anyhow you had to perish Hamlet you were not for life
you believed in crystal notions not in human clay
always twitching as if asleep you hunted chimeras
wolfishly you crunched the air only to vomit
you knew no human thing you did not know even how to breathe


Now you have peace Hamlet you accomplished what you had to
and you have peace The rest is not silence but belongs to me
you chose the easier part of an elegant thrust
but what is heroic death compared with eternal watching
with a cold apple in one’s hand on a narrow chair
with a view of the ant-hill and the clock’s dial


Adieu prince I have tasks a sewer project
and a decree on prostitutes and beggars
I must also elaborate a better system of prisons
since as you justly said Denmark is a prison
I go to my affairs This night is born
a star named Hamlet We shall never meet
what I shall leave will not be worth a tragedy


It is not for us to greet each other or bid farewell we live on archipelagos
and that water these words what can they do what can they do prince

水调歌头 Prelude to Water Melody

苏轼
Su Shi

明月几时有？把酒问青天。

How long will the full moon appear?
Wine cup in hand, I ask the sky.

不知天上宫阙，今夕是何年？

I do not know what time of the year.
It would be tonight in the palace on high.

我欲乘风归去，又恐琼楼玉宇，高处不胜寒。

Riding the wind, there I would fly,
Yet I’m afraid the crystalline palace would be
Too high and cold for me.

起舞弄清影，何似在人间？
I rise and dance, with my shadow I play.
On high as on earth, would it be as gay?

转朱阁，低绮户，照无眠。

The moon goes round the mansions red
Through gauze-draped window soft to shed
Her light upon the sleepless bed.

不应有恨，何事长向别时圆？

Why then when people part, is the oft full and bright?

人有悲欢离合，月有阴晴圆缺，此事古难全。

Men have sorrow and joy; they part or meet again;
The moon is bright or dim and she may wax or wane.
There has been nothing perfect since the olden days.

但愿人长久，千里共婵娟。

So let us wish that man
Will live long as he can!
Though miles apart, we’ll share the beauty she displays.

The North China Herald

Chen Li - Two Poems

Spiffington Manse

 

Translated Texts for Historians

https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/series/series-12316/


Translated Texts for Historians


300–800 AD is the time of late antiquity and the early middle ages: the transformation of the classical world, the beginnings of Europe and of Islam, and the evolution of Byzantium. TTH makes available sources from a range of languages, including Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, Georgian and Armenian. Each volume provides an expert scholarly translation, with an introduction setting texts and authors in context, and with notes on content, interpretation and debates.

The Pitch Drop Experiment

MYLES NA gCOPALEEN Cruiskeen Lawn January 11th, 1941

A LADY lecturing recently on the Irish language drew attention to the fact (I mentioned it myself as long ago as 1925) that, while the average English speaker gets along with a mere 400 words, the Irish-speaking peasant uses 4,000.

Considering what most English speakers can achieve with their tiny fund of noises, it is a nice speculation to what extremity one would be reduced if one were locked up for a day with an Irish-speaking bore and bereft of all means of committing murder or suicide.

My point, however, is this. The 400/4,000 ration is fallacious; 400/400,000 would be more like it. There is scarcely a single word in the Irish (barring, possibly, Sasanach) that is simple and explicit.

Apart from words with endless shades of cognate meaning, there are many with so complete a spectrum of graduated ambiguity that each of them can be made to express two directly contrary meanings, as well as a plethora of intermediate concepts that have no bearing on either.

And all this strictly within the linguistic field. Superimpose on all that the miasma of ironic usage, poetic licence, oxymoron, plamás, Celtic invasion, Irish bullery and Paddy Whackery, and it is a safe bet that you will find yourself very far from home. Here is an example copied from Dinneen and from more authentic sources known only to my little self.


Cur, g. curtha and cuirthe, m. – act of putting, sending, sowing, raining, discussing, burying, vomiting, hammering into the ground, throwing through the air, rejecting, shooting, the setting or clamp in a rick of turf, selling, addressing, the crown of cast-iron buttons which have been made bright by contact with cliff-faces, the stench of congealing badger’s suet, the luminance of glue-lice, a noise made in an empty house by an unauthorised person, a heron’s boil, a leprachaun’s (sic) denture, a sheep-biscuit, the act of inflating hare’s offal with a bicycle pump, a leak in a spirit level, the whinge of a sewage farm windmill, a corncrake’s clapper, the scum on the eye of a senile ram, a dustman’s dumpling, a beetle’s faggot, the act of loading every rift with ore, a dumb man’s curse, a blasket, a “kur”, a fiddler’s occupational disease, a fairy godmother’s father, a hawk’s vertigo, the art of predicting past events, a wooden coat, a custard-mincer, a blue-bottle’s “farm”, a gravy flask, a timber-mine, a toy craw, a porridge-mill, a fair-day donnybrook with nothing barred, a stoat’s stomach-pump, a

broken –

But what is the use? One could go on and on without reaching anywhere in particular.

Your paltry English speaker apprehends sea-going craft through the infantile cognition which merely distinguishes the small from the big.

If it’s small, it’s a boat, and if it’s big it’s a ship. In his great book An tOileánach,however, the uneducated Tomás Ó Criomhthain uses, perhaps, a dozen words to convey the concept of carrying super-marinity – árthrach long, soitheach, bád, naomhóg, bád raice, galbhád, púcán and whatever you are having yourself.

The plight of the English speaker with his wretched box of 400 vocal beads may be imagined when I say that a really good Irish speaker would blurt out the whole 400 in one cosmic grunt. In Donegal there are native speakers who know so many million words that it is a matter of pride with them never to use the same word twice in a life-time. Their life (not to say their language) becomes very complex at the century mark; but there you are.

Mount Rainier from High Rock Lookout

Two poems from Hard Roads an Cauld Hairst Winds

https://taprootpressuk.co.uk/2021/09/12/two-poems-from-hard-roads-an-cauld-hairst-winds/




‘Speelin Bonniebrou Braes’ (Li Bai)

In the Westlan Kinrik the’re monie halie hills,
But Bonniebrou’s marrowless yont aa ither;
A wandert aa owre’t ettlin ti speel up for a vizzy,
Sic unco sichts – hou’ll can a bodie see them aa?
The grey derk opens ti the lift abune,
Ye cudna pent yon mixter-maxter o hues;
Glamourt A’d soar, tane on wi the rosie rouks,
Wan throu ti the skeil o the Baudkin Poke;
Mang clouds wad blaw the Fair Fowk’s beriall flutes,
Owre clints wad thrum the jowelt tympans;
Ma haill life, smaa’s been ma ettlin,
But pleisur an lauchs wad be by wi frae this on;
The uncannie look wad be about ma brou,
The warld’s fasherie on a sudden tint an gane;
Gin A forgaither wi yon boy at striddles a yowe,
A’ll tak his haun an tove ayont the bricht sun.



Convoyin a Billie on a Lang Lang Road (Du Fu)

Wi airmit men aa owre the warld,
Whit for tak ye yon lang lang road, sir?
Yir fowk and freins greetin ilka yin,
Pownie saiddlt, you awa ti a lanesome toun.
Growth far gane i the back-en o the year,
Swyres an watters white wi snaa an cranreuch;
Yestreen we twyned, said fare-ye-weill;
Nou ye’ve seen whit hairts yir auld friens hae.

Chairman Mao's 4 Minute Workout

The scholar and his cat, Pangur Bán

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangur_B%C3%A1n


(from the Irish by Robin Flower)

I and Pangur Bán my cat,
'Tis a like task we are at:
Hunting mice is his delight,
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill-will,
He too plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry task to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way;
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our task we ply,
Pangur Ban, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

Ai Weiwei - Map of China

Created in the years of 2008 and 2009, Map of China was crafted from tielimu (ironwood) salvaged from demolished temples of Qing Dynasty, and was reconstructed using the ancient mortise-and-tenon joinery technique to create a full map of China, including Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hainan Island.

The smooth surface, which represents a seemingly modernised and unified China, resembles a jigsaw-puzzle-like arrangement of heterogeneous pieces. It is a symbol of China’s cultural and ethnic diversity, a sensitive topic that has resulted in violence and civil estrangement in recent years. It asserts that while modern China remains distinctly singular, it is a blend, sometimes collision, of 1.3 billion individuals, a mosaic of pieces from its past. Not only does it arouse nostalgia by way of traditional processes, but it also lends a new life to the forgotten woodwork.

On this approach, Ai commented, “We are moving too fast, but memories are something that we can still grasp. Memories also move around at high speeds, so they are the easiest things to which we can commit.”

Ai’s Map, therefore, challenges us to rethink the beginning of the complex nation, how it has managed to survive for thousands of years, and how it can be maintained as one. It is exemplary of how the creative process in Ai’s work matters as much as what is being saved and remade.

20 years - never forget.

 

The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On

 

Operation Trikora

 

Naval Operating Base Dutch Harbor & Fort Mears, Hill 400 Fixed Defense Battery Command Post, Unalaska, Aleutian Islands, AK

 

https://www.loc.gov/resource/hhh.ak0162.photos

The William Blake archives

http://www.blakearchive.org/







Auguries of Innocence William Blake - 1757-1827


To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage
A Dove house filld with Doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thr' all its regions
A dog starvd at his Masters Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State
A Horse misusd upon the Road
Calls to Heaven for Human blood
Each outcry of the hunted Hare
A fibre from the Brain does tear
A Skylark wounded in the wing
A Cherubim does cease to sing
The Game Cock clipd & armd for fight
Does the Rising Sun affright
Every Wolfs & Lions howl
Raises from Hell a Human Soul
The wild deer, wandring here & there
Keeps the Human Soul from Care
The Lamb misusd breeds Public Strife
And yet forgives the Butchers knife
The Bat that flits at close of Eve
Has left the Brain that wont Believe
The Owl that calls upon the Night
Speaks the Unbelievers fright
He who shall hurt the little Wren
Shall never be belovd by Men
He who the Ox to wrath has movd
Shall never be by Woman lovd
The wanton Boy that kills the Fly
Shall feel the Spiders enmity
He who torments the Chafers Sprite
Weaves a Bower in endless Night
The Catterpiller on the Leaf
Repeats to thee thy Mothers grief
Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh
He who shall train the Horse to War
Shall never pass the Polar Bar
The Beggars Dog & Widows Cat
Feed them & thou wilt grow fat
The Gnat that sings his Summers Song
Poison gets from Slanders tongue
The poison of the Snake & Newt
Is the sweat of Envys Foot
The poison of the Honey Bee
Is the Artists Jealousy
The Princes Robes & Beggars Rags
Are Toadstools on the Misers Bags
A Truth thats told with bad intent
Beats all the Lies you can invent
It is right it should be so
Man was made for Joy & Woe
And when this we rightly know
Thro the World we safely go
Joy & Woe are woven fine
A Clothing for the soul divine
Under every grief & pine
Runs a joy with silken twine
The Babe is more than swadling Bands
Throughout all these Human Lands
Tools were made & Born were hands
Every Farmer Understands
Every Tear from Every Eye
Becomes a Babe in Eternity
This is caught by Females bright
And returnd to its own delight
The Bleat the Bark Bellow & Roar
Are Waves that Beat on Heavens Shore
The Babe that weeps the Rod beneath
Writes Revenge in realms of Death
The Beggars Rags fluttering in Air
Does to Rags the Heavens tear
The Soldier armd with Sword & Gun
Palsied strikes the Summers Sun
The poor Mans Farthing is worth more
Than all the Gold on Africs Shore
One Mite wrung from the Labrers hands
Shall buy & sell the Misers Lands
Or if protected from on high
Does that whole Nation sell & buy
He who mocks the Infants Faith
Shall be mockd in Age & Death
He who shall teach the Child to Doubt
The rotting Grave shall neer get out
He who respects the Infants faith
Triumphs over Hell & Death
The Childs Toys & the Old Mans Reasons
Are the Fruits of the Two seasons
The Questioner who sits so sly
Shall never know how to Reply
He who replies to words of Doubt
Doth put the Light of Knowledge out
The Strongest Poison ever known
Came from Caesars Laurel Crown
Nought can Deform the Human Race
Like to the Armours iron brace
When Gold & Gems adorn the Plow
To peaceful Arts shall Envy Bow
A Riddle or the Crickets Cry
Is to Doubt a fit Reply
The Emmets Inch & Eagles Mile
Make Lame Philosophy to smile
He who Doubts from what he sees
Will neer Believe do what you Please
If the Sun & Moon should Doubt
Theyd immediately Go out
To be in a Passion you Good may Do
But no Good if a Passion is in you
The Whore & Gambler by the State
Licencd build that Nations Fate
The Harlots cry from Street to Street
Shall weave Old Englands winding Sheet
The Winners Shout the Losers Curse
Dance before dead Englands Hearse
Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born
Every Morn and every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to Endless Night
We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see not Thro the Eye
Which was Born in a Night to perish in a Night
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light
God Appears & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of day

WPKN 89.5-FM Bridgeport

Independent Community Radio


Listener-supported, community radio serving Fairfield, New Haven and Litchfield counties in CT and Suffolk county in New York and communities around the world at wpkn.org

https://spinitron.com/WPKN/pl/14038905/Off-Beat

Nikolai Astrup

 

MARSHALL ALLEN'S COSMIC TONES: We Out Here 2020

The Tay Bridge Disaster - William McGonagall

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!


Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

‘Twas about seven o’clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem’d to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem’d to say-
“I’ll blow down the Bridge of Tay.”

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers’ hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
“I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay.”

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers’ hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov’d most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

So the train mov’d slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o’er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill’d all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav’d to tell the tale
How the disaster happen’d on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

Squidmar's 97' Thunderhawk Warhammer 40k

 

The Autobiography of David Crook

http://www.davidcrook.net/simple/overview.html

Prison gives you time to think - especially solitary confinement. In 1972, I began my fifth year in China's top security gaol, a communist in a communist prison.


I did not blame the Cultural Revolution for my fate, although I realized that its turbulence had caused me to be branded as a foreign spy, and swept me into this seven by fifteen foot cell. I did not blame the guards, who peered at me day and night through the Judas-hole in the double door of massive timber and iron bars. It was not until the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 that I took issue with the Party. Previously, when in my cell day after day with nothing to read but the Works of Mao Ze-dong, I passed my time pondering about the forces that had moulded me, from the cradle to the cell, and how to examine my life in the light of Mao Ze-dong Thought.

I was born in 1910, in London. My father was a Jewish cockney Royalist, raised in the East End of London, by immigrant parents who fled Czarist Russia to avoid anti-Semitism and conscription into a pork-eating army. My father, a kindly, religious man who revelled in his ability to speak English without a foreign accent, worked his way up in the fur trade to build a flourishing business. He went bankrupt in the depression of 1921. From then on, my mother took over, financially and otherwise. An ambitious, charismatic romantic, she ran a fashionable fur and dress shop on Oxford Street. She could talk customers into buying whatever she wanted to sell, but couldn't be bothered with the dull details of keeping her books in order.

At the age of 15, I was pulled out of Cheltenham College because my parents couldn't pay the fees. That ended my mother's dream that I go on to Oxford. She was more upset than I was. The anti-Semitic atmosphere coupled with the fact that I excelled in study rather than sport heightened my distaste for the British public school.

During the General Strike of 1926, while working for my uncle, Phil, a London hosiery tycoon, I regarded the strike breakers as heroes, and longed to join them. Mother said no and dad pulled me away from ladies stockings after my uncle insisted I work on Saturdays. My mother took advantage of this to have me resume my education. First came a year at London Polytechnic. Next I was shipped off to learn French in Paris, where of course, I fell in love. A subsequent stay in Germany to learn the language was cut short when my immigration visa to the United States came through.

At the time I was eager to become a millionaire, restore the bankrupt family fortunes, and donate money to Zionism. My timing was bad. I arrived six months before the stock market crash of October, 1929.

I started at the bottom, in the basement of a raw fur business, handling skunk skins for $15 a week. My distaste for the "skin game" speeded up a growing awareness of the injustice of the entire economic system. The depression, with its flop houses, panhandlers and breadlines, drove me to read about the "Worker's Paradise" of the Soviet Union. My interest in Communism took a great leap forward after I left the fur business and began to work my way through Columbia University, where I became an activist in the student movement. Reading theoretical politics and joining student strikes advanced my education, but nothing pushed me forward from theory to practice as much as joining an expedition to the striking coal fields of Harlan, Kentucky. There, branded foreign trouble-makers and threatened by gun-toting deputies, we were hustled into a kangaroo court and subjected to a jingoistic, racist interrogation.

I graduated from Columbia College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1935. I had little idea what I wanted to do in life, but becoming a millionaire was now the furthest thing from my mind. Returning to England, I first joined the Communist Party, then searched for a job which I could reconcile with my new world outlook. I worked at a couple of poor paying but politically satisfying jobs, on the secretarial staff of a left Labour M.P., and on the editorial board of a left wing student publication. News of the fascist uprising in Spain, and the resistance against it, electrified me, as it did millions in the western world.

Without letting my parents know, I volunteered for the International Brigade, and reached Spain on January 2, 1937. After six weeks of training in a peaceful village, our British Battalion was sent to the front just in time to take part in the Battle of Jarama. On my first day in action, I received two bullet wounds in the thigh, crawled back to our lines, and ended up in a hospital in Madrid. During my convalescence there, I was recruited by the K.G.B. as an anti-Trotskyist spy.

Before embarking on my espionage career I had to complete my convalescence in Madrid. During this time I broadcast news to the United Kingdom, and met many Western war correspondents. These included Stephen Spender, Martha Gelhorn, and Ernest Hemmingway. Also, more intimately, a Canadian communist woman journalist with whom I inevitably had a Hemmingwayesque wartime romance. From this I tore myself away, hitch-hiked back to the front, survived an enemy attack, was transferred first to an International Brigade officers' training course and from there to Barcelona, arriving in time for the street fighting of May, 1937 between opposing left factions. After reporting to the K.G.B., it was suggested that I masquerade as a journalist. My real work was to spy on people whom the Stalinists called Trotskyists - including George Orwell.

My K.G.B. superiors were so satisfied with my work that after a year they sent me to Shanghai to continue it. There I obtained a job as a teacher of Western literature at St. John's, a prestigious mission university. This served as an excellent cover. Meanwhile I mingled once more with Western war correspondents, one of whom was my assigned target, Frank Glass. Glass, a real Trotskyist who had recently visited Trotsky in Mexico, proved to be a persuasive political propagandist and an attractive personality. He gradually shook my Stalinist faith. Shanghai, too, had its effect on me. While horrified by its contrasting wealth, poverty and corruption, I was bewitched by the beauty of Chinese women - especially by the slim, slit-skirted dollar a dance hostesses in the cabarets. Seemingly suspecting that I was becoming a traitor or a playboy my K.G.B bosses broke contact with me, leaving me an ill-paid school teacher in the Paradise of Adventurers.

My spying career cut short, I decided to see the interior of China and headed for Chengdu, where I had lined up a new teaching job. Half way along my rough, hazardous journey, I heard the news that Trotsky had been assassinated. Now it was clear. Their mission accomplished, the K.G.B. had thrown me overboard, not as untrustworthy, but because I was no longer useful.

In Chengdu, between Japanese bombing raids, I not only taught students who had trekked to the "Great Rear" from universities all over China. I also met secretly with a small group of Christian socialist missionaries studying the history of the Chinese Revolution - a dangerous enterprise under Chiang Kai-Shek's repressive regime. Between such prosaic activities, I found time to carry on a courtship with my future wife, Isabel Brown, daughter of Canadian missionaries.

Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in June, 1941 overcame, my Trotskyite-induced doubts of Stalin. I decided to return to England and re-enlist in the fight against fascism. Leaving Chengdu, I sailed from Shanghai across the Pacific, tossing my Trotskyite books overboard en route. I made my way from San Francisco to New York, writing magazine articles to make a living. To pay my way back to England, I worked on an oil tanker across the Atlantic. Upon arriving, I rejoined the British Communist Party then volunteered for the Royal Air Force where I became an intelligence officer, monitoring Japanese air force operations. Within a year, after a simple wartime wedding in which the Registry Office house painters acted as witnesses, I was headed back to Asia on a troop ship bound for Bombay.

My official R.A.F. Intelligence work took me to India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Burma, Hong Kong and Singapore. At the same time, I volunteered for overtime work as an Education and Welfare officer, secretly contacting local communists. The democratic movement within the British Armed Forces also aroused me to action, as did the allure of soldiers and sailors of the sister services. After I had been overseas for three years, Winston Churchill decided that Russia, our "noble ally," had suddenly become our ignoble enemy. I was demoted for my subversive activities (political, not romantic), and shipped home to peacetime England and marital bliss.

After studying on veterans' grants at London University , engaging in Communist Party activity and hunting for jobs, Isabel and I availed ourselves of His Majesty's offer of free "repatriation" to the land from which volunteers had come to Britain to join the armed forces. (Isabel had served in the Canadian Women's Auxiliary Corps). For us, this meant an all expenses paid journey on a slow boat back to China.

After eight months of primitive but thrilling rural life we moved a couple of hundred miles north. There we were asked to teach English in a village school set up to train staff for the Foreign Office of a future Chinese People's Government. We taught between bombing raids, frequently scattering in the fields, hiding in the mountains with our thirty-odd students, who later became ambassadors, government ministers, and officials.

In the Spring of 1949, we entered Beijing, newly liberated by the Communists. Our village school, brought to the city, grew in numbers. The students and teachers roughed it, sleeping on the floor in the former barracks of the old Japanese embassy, and sitting on camp stools in class. On October 1, Isabel and I were among a handful of non-Chinese on a makeshift platform, witnessing the march past of hundreds of thousands of citizens and soldiers, armed with American guns and tanks captured from Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang Army. We heard Mao Ze-dong proclaim from the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen) the birth of the Chinese People's Republic. He said "The Chinese People have stood up." In my heart, I stood up with them.

For the next four decades - except for my five years in gaol - I taught English and world history, in a school which grew from thirty students into a university with three thousand. I took part in mass movements, or "ideological remoulding" - Mao's method of remaking human nature - hoping to change my own nature in the process. Certainly I did change, from a shaky Stalinist into an unwavering Maoist. I remained so not only in gaol, but for ten years after my release.

I proclaimed the achievements of the Chinese Revolution during periodic trips abroad, doing propaganda in Britain, Canada, and the United States to encourage friendship with China. During these decades, besides writing magazine articles for publication in the west, with Isabel I co-authored three books on Chinese land reform and collectivization.

In the 1950s, I renewed my contact with Soviet citizens - this time not K.G.B. agents, but academics, teaching at my university. We got along well, and at the end of our first family holiday abroad returned to China by way of the Soviet Union to see them. They were warm and generous to a fault, fully living up to my youthful idealised expectations. But their social system did not. The poverty, bureaucracy, inefficiency and corruption shocked me. On returning to China I didn't mention this; in fact I hardly acknowledged it to myself. But with the split in the world communist camp in 1960 I unhesitatingly sided with China against the Soviet Union.

Still, my relations with the Chinese were not free from friction. My inherited hatred of snobbery carried over into the academic field. I made a fetish of teaching plain English. Some of my professorial Chinese colleagues, who had done graduate work in Žlitist foreign universities, looked down on my mere Columbia University B.A. degree. So when I was appointed to senior administrative positions, partly because the school leaders felt they could rely on me as a Communist, I had a hard time. This was due to my inexperience, semi-illiteracy in Chinese, and lack of subtlety in exercising authority. After some years I was removed from direct leadership and promoted to the honourable rank of Advisor to the University. That is, to a position purportedly on a par with the school president. Even there, I was ill-mannered enough not to keep quiet, but conducted myself as a gadfly, or a tribune of the people in a hierarchical society. Perhaps that helped leave me open to being framed up as a foreign spy, which landed me in gaol during the cultural revolution.

Somehow my sanity survived isolation for five years behind bars. I was not tortured, thanks to Premier Zhou En-lai. But I was kept in a cell devoid of furniture, except for a six inch high plank bed, a tiny wash basin and a seatless toilet. Day and night, by the dim prison light, I was subject to observation through the Judas hole in the double door. My reading was limited to the works of Mao Ze-dong and the Communist Party press. Interrogations, based upon the presumption of guilt, were conducted by apparently sincere officials charged with getting me to confess my "crimes." Whenever I professed innocence, I was told, "Of course you're guilty. Otherwise how could you be here."

It was a combination of tragedy and comedy, but I dared not laugh until I was back in my cell. When I "confessed" to joining the Red Guards, I was cursed. "You didn't join - you WORMED your way in!" they shouted. Then, when I spoke of "worming my way into a British study group, which my interrogators considered suspect, I was cursed again. The one captor I had nicknamed Sneerer barked, "You didn't worm your way in - you joined!"

Comic interludes apart, it was a dreary drama. Little things became important. I found myself eagerly anticipating normally mundane chores, like washing my clothes, clipping my nails, and taking my monthly shower. Yet the years were enriched by introspection, during which I measured my life with the yardstick of the Thought of Mao Ze-dong.

I was released from prison on January 27, 1973. After a moving reunion with family, friends, students and colleagues, I was back at work within three days. That, in the eyes of Chinese society, was proof of my innocence. Six weeks later, on March 8, Premier Zhou En-lai left his hospital bed to give a reception in the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square. In a passionate speech to 800 people, he explained the political problems which had led to the injustice done to me and a handful of other English-speaking victims of frame-ups and harassment during the cultural revolution. He apologized to each of us by name on behalf of the Party and Government. Frail as he was, he did the rounds of the 80 tables of guests, then made a point of shaking hands and chatting with us victims. Then he went back to the hospital, and I held up my head.

Next year I went to England, Canada, and the United States, doing propaganda, defending the positive aspects of the cultural revolution! Throughout the seventies the University assigned me increasingly responsible duties. I felt more at home than ever in my adopted country. But towards the end of the decade, with a consciousness sharpened by Chinese and Western friends, including our three sons, I gradually grew critical and disillusioned. I saw that with the expansion of the economy went an expansion of corruption - and a contraction of democracy. With the policy of opening up went a weakening of socialist moral standards. With a certain raising of living standards, went a growing gap between rich and poor. Money ruled the roost. When, in 1987, Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yao-bang opposed all this, he was fired - in flagrant breach of the Party constitution. And when students and others demonstrated in peaceful protest, they were brutally suppressed. Some were savagely sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. My five years in prison did not undermine my admiration for the past-achievements of the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Government. Yet now, for the first time in 40 years, while my love for the Chinese people remains as strong as ever, I feel at odds with the powers that be.

The climax of this discord came with the democratic movement of the Spring of 1989. I went along with the demand for democracy, as well as the denunciation of corruption, nepotism, and bureaucracy. And when the movement was suppressed in blood, when the massacre was denied and followed by a witch hunt in which the victims were blamed - that was the end of my decades of adulation. I had thought that People's China was humanity's guide to a better world. I still acknowledge her past achievements. But her record has been tragically tarnished. Now the task is to cleanse it. I hope I shall live long enough to see that done, and play a small part in doing it.