Sunday, 10 October

Today was National Day, and also the day for the Generalissimo to take over as the country’s Chairman. We had a simple celebration on order of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Therefore at 4.00 p.m. we held the small celebration to commemorate The Generalissimo taking over the Chairmanship. From 5.00 to 7.30 we received foreign guests. The food was prepared by the National Hotel. We sent out 250 invitations and prepared food for 150 people. There was a lot of food. People in the Diplomat Corps were quite surprised. Ambassador Kerr said that the food was enough for 500 people. Deputy People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Lozovsky, came with his wife. His wife was very nice, and I heard that she was a very well-known engineer and was still in charge of a certain electrical engineering station. This was the first time that we have seen her join a Diplomatic Corps function. I was very pleased. Lozovsky told me that Chairman Kalinin has already cabled the Generalissimo his congratulations for our National Day and the Generalissimo as Chairman. The newly appointed Vice Minister (name unclear) was present, and the rest like the Vice Minister of Trade Department, Vice Minister of Defence Department (name unclear), and a lot of personnel from their diplomats, Trade as well as Defence, and the Chairman of Voks Keminov and others were also present. Many Soviet officials came with wives. Borodin also came. All of the Diplomatic Corps came. It happened that the Chairman of the War Production Board, Donald Nelson, happened to be in Moscow and he came with the American Charge d’Affaires. I was very pleased. The diplomats all said they hadn’t had such a function for several years, because there was not much chance to have this type of thing here. So many of them just stayed and didn’t want to leave. They even wanted to dance. I just let them do so. They did not leave until 11.00 p.m. They were very impressed with the ‎Gu embroidery in the Chinese lounge. These were made by the famous Guangdong and Hunan embroiderers and they were presents from the Qing emperor to the Tzar. The emperors of the former Qing feared the gift to Tsar would be damaged on the way, so they prepared two sets. One of them was given to the Tsar, the other set reserved in the Embassy. The workmanship was excellent and the colours bright and lovely. Recently, to give a party in Moscow, the most difficult thing was to get food. The second was getting people to take part. The third was how the host could make the guests happy. Tang Shaoyi was the best-known diplomat in the last generation of diplomats that could entertain all guests to great satisfaction. When I was younger, I always paid great attention to his treat, how he entertained guests, how much time the host interacted with the guests, and how to attend to other guests. He mastered these so well that everyone was so pleased but I was unable to learn. Probably people were very pleased tonight and I felt great satisfaction.

Today the Generalissimo gave a broadcast to the foreign countries. Quite good.