Sunday, 24 September

Fine

I received the telegram from the Foreign Ministry. It transferred Shaozhou to be acting Commissioner of Xinjiang. Minister Song also sent Shaozhou a telegram, saying that the order was a written instruction from the Generalissimo, but asked Shaozhou to stay in Moscow temporarily, probably waiting for the arrival of Minister Song before taking up his post. Shaozhou himself thought that Xinjiang matters were very thorny, and he has no experience in local administration so he cabled the Foreign Ministry to decline, and cabled Chen Bulei and Shao Lizi for help.

This afternoon the weather was very nice. So I went to the park with Hu. There were many people there, which was just like a halcyon time. We had sausage, egg, cocoa and black bread together in the garden restaurant.

In the evening I invited Shaozhou and his wife and Attaché Hu to the Grand Theatre to watch the opera Spring of Tears. The setting was different from before. Though the female character Tibomuroba’s dance was not as good as Semeonova, she was younger and much more beautiful. Hu said it was a pity that her breasts were not good enough. She is right.