Wednesday, 26 January

Fine, warm, sun in the afternoon 

In the afternoon, Australian Counsellor Keith Officer came and talked to me. He will be transferred to Chongqing to be in charge of the Australian Embassy there. He is a very clever and intelligent person, and in Chongqing he will be able to use his talent. He could do nothing here and he is very happy to leave. I immediately cabled the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to report.

Today was Jingchen and Daichu’s birthday, so I and the two of them invited people in the Embassy to dine, and to bid farewell to Secretary Gou. Originally, they wanted to hold this celebration the day after tomorrow, as my birthday is that day. However, I have been very sad because of my mother’s death, and my suffering in the past few days has been extreme. I felt so painful that I could not tell anyone. So the celebration was held earlier, and I tried to be pleasant today.

In the evening the British broadcast said the American Government has declared that the Soviet Government has declined the United States as mediator in the Soviet-Polish Incident.

During the night, I dreamt of a certain person (Bohua) asking me about a certain young lady’s love towards him, and the future of it. I joked with him and asked him to write down one word, and tried to predict what would happen. He wrote the word “sheng”. I said the prospect was not promising. We took “sheng”, and it implied that they might not be together. We took the upper part of the character, it would imply the male was interested while the female was uninterested. If the male insists, he will suffer. We laughed at each other.