Round House

Thursday, 8 February

New Year’s Day, Geng Chen year

According to the lunar calendar, I am already 45 years old. Looking back over the last year, during the first half I was under acute psychological pain because of economic difficulty. Hopefully as fourth brother Jincheng[1] offered help the hardship was solved temporarily. But because of this my relationship with Sun Fo was not as close as before. I think of our friendship over some twenty years. He always treated me well which made me feel guilty that sometimes I wanted to cut off all my political ties completely. After coming to Chungking all of my friends treated me well, which made me feel much better. On returning back to China, Sun Fo treated me with great courtesy and confided his secret and personal things to me. He stayed much closer to me than in the past. I was truly moved. As a gentleman would die for a friend understanding him well, he should also put emphasis on virtuousness. Thus my struggling spirit in the past has resumed completely. I kept striving and hoped that I could be of help to his political career to repay his and Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s kindness to me. Altough the work in the Legislative Yuan is unimportant, I am confident that I can be of assistance to Sun Fo in liaising with various sides. For myself, I thought I could take the spare time in Dushiqiao to read the new books he brought from Europe, which would be really beneficial to my body and mind. What worries me most is my mother. She is quite old already and her health is deteriorating. My recent economic difficulty has made her ill, and I feel very guilty about this. Hopefully Bingkun has still got a job (For this I am really grateful for the help of Wang Chonghui), and Bingyi’s farm is also quite successful, which relives me a little bit. As for [my wife] Yanfang, though she is quite cold to me because of Mrs. Zhao, I feel very guilty that I cannot completely support her economically.

I left Li Dugong’s at 8.30 in the morning then I took a car and sedan chair back to the Round House. I had a sleep and slept until 12.30 noon. When we were having lunch, Gan Naiguang came. Sun Fo asked me to visit Chengdu with him.

At 2.00 p.m. Sun Fo and I walked uphill to the Li Garden at Foutuguan. Li was a salt merchant. At the end of the Qing Dynasty he amassed a wealth of more than ten million dollars. Since the Republican era this garden has been taken over by warlords. It happened that Tan Pingshan lived there so we wanted to visit him. He showed us Zhu De’s open cablegram and others refuting Chen Cheng’s claim that the Eighth Route Army was only roving and not attacking. He also told us a little bit about the Eighth Route Army’s current situation. He said General Chiang recently asked people from the various parties for their opinion about the KMT-CCP problem. They all thought that during the war of resistance we should not break up.

After dinner, I chatted with Sun Fo. He told me the details of the bad things Ling Jidong did to him. Sun also said that before he went abroad early last year as I was not in Chungking, he had difficulty finding companions. Ling Jidong immediately said H.H. Kung told him that General Chiang had received reports saying that when I was in Paris I always went dancing, thus giving a bad impression of me. Ling Jidong urged Sun Fo that he should not go about with me. Therefore Sun Fo took company with Ling Jidong instead. Originally Ling Jidong said that with regard to cablegrams and others he could cope, but on arriving in Moscow, he suddenly asked a third-class secretary in the Chinese embassy to do the work without notifying Sun Fo. On knowing this Sun Fo was most unhappy but he did not say anything. Until one evening Molotov asked Sun Fo to see him, telling Sun the news that the content of the Sino-Soviet Commercial Treaty had been leaked out, and French reporters went to interview Molotov, of which Molotov said in quite an unfriendly tone that it must not have come from the Soviet side but our side. Sun Fo replied that those who came with him were trustworthy and would not do such a thing. Molotov asked Sun if anyone in the embassy staff knew. Sun Fo replied that one or two of them might know. Molotov immediately said that the embassy was absolutely unreliable, and the content must have been leaked from it. This caused Sun Fo much embarrassment. On returning to the hotel, he summoned all the followers and blamed Ling Jidong saying that he should not ask the embassy staff to translate cablegrams as it was certainly inappropriate to let people other than companions know classified material. After hearing this Ling Jidong was very angry, and banged the table violently and shouted at Sun Fo. Ling Jidong said that this time he had come with Sun Fo because they had been friends for some twenty years he wanted to help Sun. His words were such an outpouring that Sun Fo did not trust him. If this was the case he absolutely would not care about matters concerning Sun any more. After saying all these words, Ling Jidong returned to his room, found the telegraphic code documents, and threw them on Sun Fo ‘s table. Sun Fo told me that at the time he could not tolerate it any longer. He warned Ling Jidong seriously that his behavior was most inappropriate towards his senior and he should not act like this even towards his friends. The reason he (Sun Fo) came here was for the government and not for private matters, and Ling Jidong came here to also work for the government not for him. As he (Sun Fo) was working for the Government he could not do things as per his own will, and such an act from Ling Jidong was not only bad for him, but above all, against the government’s behavior code. Yu Ming and others urged Sun Fo to leave and Ling Jidong returned to his room. In the seven and eight days afterwards he did not meet with Sun Fo.  Later on, when they saw each other again they did not mention it. But last December, Sun Fo raised the issue of Ling Jidong again, saying Ling was difficult when working with others. Even concerning the matter in Moscow he did not apologise to Sun. Sun Fo said to Ling Jidong that “I forgive but I do not forget.” I thought that Sun Fo was not quite right either that though he forgave Ling he was still angry about it. Ling Jidong said “since you (Sun Fo) have no confidence in me, I will put up my resignation now.” Sun lost his temper and said “your resignation is gladly accepted.” Ling Jidong said that he would go to Hong Kong, but after ten days, his resignation letter still had not come, so Sun Fo had to send a written instruction to stop his salary as Sun Fo had made up his mind not to work with him any longer.

[1] Fu Jincheng was the son of Fu Bingchang’s uncle Fu Yipang.