Wishing you every happiness of the season -

and a year of regeneration and hope in 2012

Adam Williams

Dear Pan

I’m listening to the collection of Pensive Music that you once chose and recorded for me. Poignant, heart-rasping strings are playing against a calm clarichord in Handel’s Violin Sonata 1/12, together inducing a sense of melancholy that is at the same time measured, sure and comforting.

I’m not sure what words I can use to describe how I feel since I heard last week from your family that you had moved on to new adventures, but it must be something like the feeling induced by this music. I am on the one hand desperately sad and bereft that a great friend, a truly great friend under every definition of great, has parted from this world. Like all departures it marks the end of an era, bringing regret and irreparable loss.

On the other hand, your presence, in memory, in thought, in sheer pleasure of recollection, is as strong as ever, and I suspect will grow and strengthen over time. All those who knew you will remember with sheer joy all the different aspects of your Protean personality. I have been reading with laughter and sometimes a tear the tributes from all over the world that have been sent to your family and copied (in your own inimitable fashion) to everybody who knew you (nobody in this life SHARED more than you. Being your friend was like being a member of a select society) .

First there was your ‘satiable curtiosity’ (like that of the Elephant Child in Kipling’s ‘Just So Stories’) And there was indeed something child-like in your curiosity, for you saw the world with the same fathomless wonder which envelops every wide-eyed little boy or girl encountering a new experience, only in your case it lasted all your life. You were interested in everything, and you brought us along with you to share it. How many of us on a Sunday have been rousted out of somnolence and idleness because you had discovered the temple where the Eunuchs of the Imperial Court were buried, and we just had to have a picnic there? Or been whisked on a train two hundred miles on a long weekend because how could a further day go by without visiting the Buddhist Caves, hanging temples and 11th century wooden pagoda in Datong? Or been pulled away from dinner to make a call on the last Aisin Goro Princess to whom you were delivering a box of chocolates? And that was just in Beijing where I had the privilege of being your companion on such jaunts. Everywhere else in the world you did the same. I have never been to the Ukraine, or Southern India or the northeastern forests and swamps of Poland – but I feel I know them, because you sent long emails, with photographs and detailed descriptions of everywhere you had been. Every message from you was a history lesson. In my mind I stood with you on a windswept shore in the Crimea by a prehistoric mound and then, simply by rolling down the cursor on the screen, found myself in the abandoned caves that had once housed the submarines of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, but we did not linger there in those damp, dripping shadows; next minute I was standing with you in cold clear sunlight by the walls of mediaeval Kiev and from there we went on to Chernobyl. All in one email! And when you were not emailing, you were sending CDs of local music you had compiled. You were working on all senses, Pan! And cylinders!

You were never what I would call a tourist, though. What you were doing was closer to the research of an 18th Century Encyclopaedist or explorer – a Diderot, a Linnaeus, a Banks – cataloguing knowledge for that vast Encyclopaedia that was your own prodigious memory, compiling facts to be compared and analysed, then brought into discussion so that your insights could benefit your work and the society in which you found yourself.

I have never met anybody who traversed so many cultures and so successfully made them your own. Your knowledge of European history was no less than that of China or Japan. You combined the philosophy of China with the scientific rationalism of the Enlightenment and the spiritualism of India. I’ll never forget the wonderful China dinner in which you pitted yourself in argument against your good friend, the senior economist of the World Bank in Beijing – alas I forget his name. For the listeners, it was extraordinary. With great erudition and sincerity on both sides, he, an Indian, argued the advantages of Chinese materialism over the spiritual democracy of India and you, a Chinese, argued with panache the reverse.

The Canadian Government was lucky to have you in its foreign service. You talked to me often about your aid work, though it was not on the professional side that I knew you. What I did see, from the outside, was a natural born diplomat, someone who could cross any cultural barrier with ease and charm, and through friendship give substance and meaning to international cooperation, cultural as well as economic. You did it with kindness and humour – mischievous, wicked humour, which made all of us love your company – but friendliness alone does not earn respect. That was earned by the steel inside you – you were not a man to suffer fools or villains gladly, and you had the virtues of stubbornness, anger and a lashing tongue at your command if it was merited. But even more potent than steel was your integrity.

You were undeniably an idealist. You saw the world as it should be and were determined to do your bit to move it in the direction of liberty and democracy, though you were never a preacher and were always rational and experienced enough to be aware that the Mountain doesn’t often come to Mahomet, especially in Communist China. Yet everybody who met you knew where you stood and that you were fearless in stating what you believed. When you kindly sent me your memoirs and I read about your courage as a young man standing up first to the Japanese, then the Kuomintang in Taiwan, it began to make sense, and I understood why, even though you clearly and vocally represented a system that was certainly in antipathy to China’s, many of its leading intellectuals and even ministers and vice ministers came to respect you, even visited your flat for dinner, because they valued your opinions and appreciated what you had to say. You had a remarkable gift, Pan. You could make people debate – and of course that is the first step towards liberty.

I think it was appropriate in your later years that you wrote a version of China’s Journey to the West. There always were elements in you of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King!

The music has stopped but I am finding that I am writing to you quite naturally, as if you can hear me. Well, if anybody can penetrate the veils of the after world to satisfy his curiosity about what’s going on on earth, it will be you. I like to think of you twinkling mischievously, Sun Wukong-like behind some cloud, looking down at what’s going on, checking on your old friends, though I know you’re also itching to explore whatever new dimension you’re finding out there.

But even if there’s nothing, I know you will have been content before the last light faded.

For besides the pleasure you gave us in your life, there is something else you have given us in your death. You have been an example to us. You have shown us what is unselfish courage, and you have done more than that, you have defied Fate and taken it into your hands.

I thought I knew you well, but I really got to know you during your last trials, after you had discovered the hideous fact that you had ALS. It might have broken a lesser man, or driven him to self pity or misanthropic introspection. You, however, saw it as a challenge. Quite simply, you made the decision to beat it. You set out to find a cure.

I consider myself fortunate that I was in Beijing where stem cell research was going on despite a world wide ban. We were able to find the one man on the planet who could help you, a modest physician who worked in a Military hospital called Dr An. It was painful, and very experimental, even dangerous treatment, but in astonishment I watched your relationship develop, not that of a doctor and patient, more that of a collaborator or fellow researcher. You meticulously noted every stage of your progress, feeding the information back to Dr An, as well as doctors in the West, so that they could learn and improve. It was one in a million odds that you would be cured. Dr An actually never told you you would be. But that didn’t deter you. You held the rate of the disease back for some years, and as the inevitable deterioration continued, you never lost your confidence, your hope or your good humour. It was always the old Pan I saw in the hospital when I visited, never the invalid, and like the old Pan, you, with Heng Ching by your side, played host, as well as you could, with whatever the hospital could provide. I could have been back in your home. We talked. We exchanged books. We debated. I realized your curiosity about life had not abated an iota – it was, well, insatiable.

Such courage, Pan. You would have thought lightly of it. You were being your stoic self. But everybody who had the honour of being with you was amazed as much as moved.

It was also wonderful to see you with Heng Ching. Her strength and indomitability matched yours. It is rare when you can see a couple where you can truly say, you are worthy of each other. And mature love and unselfishness is awesome.

The end of course came slowly. Nina and Nadia sent bulletins and we exchanged letters, although it was more and more difficult for you. The sadness I felt was buoyed by the love I knew was surrounding you. You did not have the monopoly of courage in your family, Pan.

A few weeks ago Nina wrote me saying you had a book for me and asked what address it was best to send it to. I didn’t reply immediately. I decided to send you a long letter full of ideas and politics which I thought might entertain you. I had it all there in my head, all the clever phrases and witticisms – but I never sat down to write it. Then I heard the news and realized it was too late. My sorrow was mixed with regret that I had lost a chance to say goodbye.

From Shanghai airport I phoned Heng Ching and Nina. They were both so calm that I almost broke down there in the airport lounge.

Then Heng Ching and Nadia told me how you had planned your end. You had waited selflessly through all your pain until the very last moment, and then with dignity, you had decided to make your farewells and go. You kept the initiative until the very end. You did it. You did defeat ALS. You controlled Fate.

I told Heng Ching you were the bravest man I had ever met. “I know,” she said.

So I decided to write to you after all. For somebody like you, there’s always time to say goodbye. You’ll hear me somehow.

Goodbye, Pan. I loved knowing you.

Adam

Heraclitus

They told me you were dying, they told me you were dead

They brought me bitter news to hear, and bitter tears to shed

I wept as I remembered, how often you and I

Had tired the sun with talking, and watched him down the sky.

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest

A handful of grey ashes, long long ago at rest

Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales awake,

For Death he taketh all away, but those he cannot take.

 

William Johnson Cory

From The Morte d’Arthur

The sequel of to-day unsolders all

The goodliest fellowship of famous knights

Whereof this world holds record. Such a sleep

They sleep — the men I loved. I think that we

Shall never more, at any future time,

Delight our souls with talk of knightly deeds,

Walking about the gardens and the halls

Of Camelot, as in the days that were…

 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

From The Book of the Courtier

There are dead in like maner manie other that are named in this boke, unto whom a man wold have thought that nature had promised a verie longe lief. But the thinge that should not be rehersed wythout teares is that the Dutchesse she is also dead. And if my minde be troubled with the losse of so manye frindes and good Lordes of myne, that have left me in this lief, as it were in a wildernes full of sorow, reason would it should with much more grief beare the heavinesse of the Dutchesse death, then of al the rest, bicause she was more worth then all the rest, and I was much more bound unto her then unto all the rest.

Baldassare Castiglione, lamenting the passing of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino and their court, and the great philosophical debates about chivalry and courtly love that used to be held in their beautiful palace. (Sir Thomas Hoby’s translation)

Partly I am drawn there by the town’s beauty: the magnificent castle, the many churches, the market that fills the cobbled streets between the tall houses and above all by the unique covered bridge that aesthetically, in my view, excels even the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. Its simple timber balustrades with its stunning views have been the subjects of prints and paintings for hundreds of years. It is a dream of mine that one day I may be able to fly fish for the trout, whose dark shadows can be seen basking under the wooden piles of the bridge and in the calm pools on the side of the weir.
 

I am also moved deeply by Bassano’s history, particularly by its association with the First World War. Situated at the bottom of a cleft of Monte Grappa, the winding road up to the war memorial on the summit was the one described in ‘A Farewell To Arms’, still my favorite novel of Ernest Hemingway. The bridge is associated with Italy’s most famous and toughest mountain regiment, the Alpini, which is headquartered in the town. A few years ago, on a visit, I found the bridge was full of veterans in their distinctive feathered hats singing their many martial songs under the beams. The chill and tragedy of that cold, white war in the passes, so evocatively described by Hemingway and lately in Mark Thompson’s majestic history of that campaign ‘The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front, 1915-1919’ is still a ghostly presence.
 

Finally, I use the occasion to stock up with possibly the best grappa in the world – and where better to buy it than the ancient oak paneled shop of Nardini that sits on the western end of the bridge itself? “BASSANO – al PONTE dal 1779” is the proud claim on the bottle – and every sip of it is as clean and bracing as the Monte Grappa snow from which it comes.

Photos © Hong Ying

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It was already 6.30 pm so there weren’t many swimmers left in the great natural pool bounded by the rocks of the disused fishing harbour, but we slipped into the dark blue water and let it wrap us like silk, lazily swimming out to the rocks and the gulls, and paddling water in the Adriatic itself, just outside the gap of the harbour – gazing north 50 miles up the coast to the shadowy peninsula of Conero with its wine and monasteries, and southwards to where the coast faded into infinity, with its parallel line of beach and railway that stretch unbroken all the way to Apulia on the spur of Italy’s boot. A gentle swell washed us back inside the pool. We let the tide take us, enjoying the postcard scenery of the old village with its square box houses and church nestling under a green cliff, with at one end a lighthouse (il faro, that gave the restaurant its name). If it had not been for the harsh bray of a train and a row of white Fiats on flatcars hurrying on their way to Bologna, we could have been back in provincial Italy of the Nineteenth century. This is bathing for me now. An empty beach on a tropical island? What possible interest could that have? How could it compare with the fat lady on the deckchair in the red spotted bathing suit feeding figs to her grandchild, or the lounging young Adonises exercising all their charms on sunburned goddesses on whom pasta has not quite yet formed rolls on the stomach, and the old couples in straw hats on the seawall looking out to the pink that was beginning to touch the horizon? Life in all its idiosyncrasy, in other words, among ordinary people enjoying themselves in a place made even more special by the lack of any pretension.

The sun over the horizon, Angelo and his waitresses began to lay the tables for dinner at Il Faro, while his lads moved up and down the beach folding the ombrelloni. The sky was taking on the colour of a sort of pastel Zuppa Inglese, as Italians call trifle, full of pinks and oranges. The sun bathers, all bar the most doughty, had packed up and gone. It was time for newly married couples to come to the beach in their wedding finery for their formal portraits against a ‘natural setting’. Burly photographers and unsure bridesmaids followed behind from rock to rock.

Then, in the half hour before dinner, all was empty. The deserted umbrellas took on a surreal alien life form in the gentle breeze that was blowing off the heat of the day, while the splendour in the great sky above gently faded. Candles began to twinkle at Il Faro. The wash of blue changed imperceptibly to vermilion, and dusk was over almost before it started.

We plodded sadly through the tunnel with our bathing gear, heading back to our car by the municipal gardens, and China.

Photos © Hong Ying

Visit the official ‘Midnight in Peking’ website.

‘Midnight in Peking’ by Paul French will be available in shops from midnight, 29 August 2011 in Australia and Asia.

Click to buy here

Mass on Monte Amandola

We drove from comfortable farmland to the forest line, parking at the 1,200 M high Amandola Rifugio. From here we followed the footpath up the side of the mountain. It was 8.30 in the morning and the heat was already nearly 30˚C. Because we rested in the shade of every rare bush we could find, it took us nearly three hours to climb the further 500 M to the peak of Monte Amandola. At the top, about ten retired Alpini and two dozen assorted trekkers were gathered round a stone cross where a priest was holding mass.

It was already a mediaeval world. In the meadows at the top of the mountain, sun browned shepherds, fleeces on their shoulders, guarded their flocks, while their white shaggy maremmas (Italy’s version of Collies) chivvied and barked flaking pilgrims like me the last hundred yards to the summit. Across a deep gorge, above rocky cliffs, rose the sharp conical peak of Mt Sibilla, and behind were the other peaks of the Sibillini chain.

The tableau at the top was breathtaking, and very moving. It reminded me of the mosaic in the crypt of the St Emidio Cathedral in Ascoli Piceno showing Roman Catholic partisans at prayer with their rifles in the high Apennine pastures during World War Two.

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Luckily, since the heat had now reached 34˚C and my four-year-old daughter, Sybil, was in no state for the tramp down again (nor was I: I’d just experienced a visual white out in the blazing sunshine) one of the Alpini veterans volunteered to take us to the bottom in his Jeep (along with the table and the communion wine). We bumped along sparse grassy mountain tracks and traversed precipitous slopes. “Brutto” said the Alpino, though there was a view of paradise at every perpendicular bend.

I expressed my admiration for his hat. It was the traditional green, curled rim trilby, with the feather and badge of the Italian army’s most elite regiment. It was old and well worn, but in fine condition. He said he had been given it when he joined the army in 1969. He had worn it proudly when facing off Tito on the Austrian border, and ever since. He kept the felt supple with grappa – 52 bottles over 42 years.

Mosaic of partisans at prayer in the crypt of the Cathedral di San Emidio in Ascoli Piceno

Photos © Hong Ying

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Photos © Hong Ying

Photos by Clio Williams

In more recent years I have made fewer historical match-making excursions , tending to spend my holidays in my house in Italy. So I was not expecting much when last autumn I went on a business trip to New Zealand.

The one chance to get away from the inside of government offices and meetings with companies was a weekend in the Malborough Sounds – that maze of creeks and islands at the northern tip of the South Island. Old friends – John and Avenal Mckinnon – had a holiday house on one of the islands. John and I shared a personal bond known only to those who have sat in a room together and recited the sound ‘Ma’ a hundred times in four separate tones – the first lesson of any student learning Chinese. It had been some years since he had been New Zealand’s Ambassador in Beijing and I was looking forward to catching up with him. I was also keen to see their son, Sasha, whom I had known all his life. I had attended his christening nearly 30 years before in St John’s Cathedral in Hong Kong and more recently his wedding to Rhiannon in the same place. Malborough Sounds itself had a lure for me: it had been to the Outward Bound School there that I had sent my own two children in their gap year before university.

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I was expecting a relaxing time reminiscing over a glass or two of fine New Zealand wine, and taking walks in a landscape of great natural beauty.

Well I got that, all right. Double Bay, where the McKinnons had their comfortable bungalow, was cut off from the rest of the world by the wide waters of Queen Charlotte Sound. It could only be reached by motorboat. Once there, we were alone among thick woods leading to high hills behind us and a rocky promontory between two stony beaches, inhabited only by tiny oystercatchers– and it was idyllic. The sunset over the sound, the shapes of far off islands fading into violet twilight, had a beauty that might even have cheered up Robinson Crusoe, though he, poor fellow, did not have the benefit of John’s cellar.

It was as we were sipping a glass of Oyster Bay before dinner that I congratulated John on having discovered such paradise in the middle of nowhere.

“It’s not the middle of nowhere,” he replied. “Believe it or not, this bay and the ridge above it was the setting for one of the most important geographical discoveries ever made – maybe the last important discovery in the mapping of the Earth.”

“You’ll have to explain that one,” I said.

And he did, with the aid of a huge volume of Captain Cook’s Journal of His First Voyage.

The key date was January 23rd 1770. Captain Cook had sailed his ship, the Endeavour, across the Pacific with the intention of mapping the Great Southern Continent, which, so the wisdom of the time had it, incorporated Australia and stretched eastwards – but crossing the great expanse of water on their way they saw no signs of a continent or ‘Mainland’ . Arriving at the North Island their first thought was that New Zealand was a missing part of the main, but when they sailed southwards they found themselves in the confusion of the Sounds. This intrigued them. The only other explorer who had been to New Zealand was the Dutchman Abel Tasman who had sailed along the west coast of both islands without confirming whether the land eastwards led to more sea or linked to the Southern Continent. He did not identify the passage between North and South Island as a strait, but marked it on his map as an inlet or bight. The possibility did occur to Cook, however, that this might be a through passage leading to the ‘Eastern Sea’ ie the Pacific, in which case New Zealand would not be part of any continent but an island far away from anywhere – and this would put in doubt the whole concept of a Southern Continent. On the 22nd January, Captain Cook, with two of his scientists, including the future President of the Royal Society, the botanist Joseph Banks, set off in small pinnace from their anchorage in Queen Charlotte Sound. The Captain’s journal and Banks’s diary tell the story:

Extract from Cook’s Journal (January 1770)

Captain James Cook

MONDAY 22nd. PM and in the night had Variable light airs and Calms, AM had a fresh breeze Southly and Clowdy weather. In the morning the people were set about the necessary business of the Ship and I set out in the Pinnace (accompanied by Mr Banks and Dr Solander) with a view to examining the head of the inlet, but after rowing between 4 and 5 Leagues up it and finding no probability of reaching or even seeing the end the wind being againest us and the day already half spent we landed at noon on the SE side in order to try to get upon one of the hills to View the Inlet from thence.

TUESDAY 23rd. PM Winds Southerly a fresh breeze. Agreeable to what is mentioned above I took one man with me and climed to the top of one of the hills but when I came there I was hindred from seeing up the inlet by higher hills which I could not come at for impenetrable woods, but I was abundantly recompenced for the trouble I had in assending the hill, for from it I saw what I took to be the Eastern Sea, the main land which lies on the SE side of this inlet appeared to me to be a narrow ridge of very high hills and to form a part of the SW side of the Strait. The land on the opposite side seem’d to trend away East as far as the Eye could see, to the SE appear’d as oppen sea and this I took to be the Eastern. I likewise saw some Islands lying on the East side of the Inlet which before I had taken to be part of the Main land. As soon as I had decended the hill and we had refreshed our selves we set out in order to return to the Ship and in our way pass’d through and examined the Harbours, Coves &ca that lay behind the Islands above mentioned. In this rout we met with an old Village in which were a good many houses but no body had lived in any of them lately, we likewise saw a nother that was inhabited, but the day being far spent so that we had not time to go to it but made the best [of] our way to the Ship which we reached between 8 and 9 oClock. In the night had much rain with Clowdy hazey weather which continued by intervils untill noon.

Extract from the Endeavour journal of Sir Joseph Banks

Joseph Banks

1770 January 22.

Made an excursion today in the pinnace in order to see more of the Bay.
While Dr Solander and Myself were botanizing the captn went to the top of a hill and in about an hour returned in high spirits, having seen the Eastern sea and satisfied himself of the existence of a straight communicating with it, the Idea of which had Occurd to us all from Tasmans as well as our own observations.

“Well, that was very interesting,” I told John, “but how did it prove that there wasn’t a Southern Continent?”

“Well, it didn’t exactly, but what he saw proved that New Zealand was not part of it, and his later voyages confirmed that one didn’t exist. That was the last piece of the puzzle as far as the mapping of the world was concerned. It was that climb to the top of the hill that was the first evidence to Cook that perhaps the Continent was a flight of the imagination and the mapping of the world, bar a few odd archipelagos, was actually essentially complete.”

“And he climbed the hill from this bay?” I asked.

“That’s what Cook’s editor Beaglehole thought, though some opinion has it that they set off from Umuwheke Bay, which is just down the coast a little bit. Anyway, Cook’s Lookout, where he made his observations is directly above us and just to the left. You can climb there tomorrow morning– from here!” he finished triumphantly. “Oh, by the way, the discrepancy in dates between Cook’s entry and Banks’s entry may be because one of them did not take account of what we now call the date line as Banks’ 22nd must correspond to Cook’s 23rd.”

“Thank you, I’m glad we sorted that one out,” I said. “But Captain Cook and Joseph Banks spent a night on this beach? This place is important?”

“I take my stand that in world historical terms, Arapawa Island is immensely important,” said John, “and not just because two generations of Williamses have visited us here!”

At that point Avenal and Rhiannon called us to supper. Next morning, guided by Sasha and Rhiannon and their dog Daphne, I climbed the path to the Lookout, my heart bursting with pleasure and pride that I was walking in the footsteps of Captain Cook…

Unless he actually climbed up from Umuwheke!

Discovering New Zealand

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