Round House

Sunday, 4 February

After lunch I went with Wu Shangying and Tianjuan to visit Deng Zhaoyin. Zhang Bojun said General Chiang had invited the political councillors to have lunch at noon.  Hu Jingyi(胡景伊) raised the matter that the principal of a certain secondary school in Chungking was involved in bribery and the issue that the mobs destroyed movies. If it was not for Zhang Boling (張伯苓)[1] declaring the end of the meeting, it was worrying that there would be many things that could embarrass people at the luncheon. But I thought it would also be fine to let General Chiang know this type of thing.

I took a walk with Tianjuan to the various bazaar streets. As seen from things for sale and the people’s living standards, they are really poorer than our Guangdong and Shanghai. The old clothing which people sold and bought in the teahouses was so shabby, and from this I knew the living standard was so low here, as the same clothing would have been long ago thrown away in Guangdong and Jiangsu. But the story-telling in teahouses was similar to that of our Guangdong twenty or thirty years ago.

Xu Jingtang invited us to have dinner at Li Dugong’s place. Peng Zexiang (彭澤湘) and Zhang Bojun and others were at the same table.

Sun Fo told me that Ms. Lan Ni might come here and that she had real economic difficulties maintaining the family. I absolutely did not dare say anything.

[1] Zhang Boling (1876-1951) was a very famous educator and politician who founded Nankai University.