Wednesday, 7 December

Zhongxiong said Defeng advocated that two of them would sell their car and would jointly provide the money to rent the Montparnasse restaurant. I quite agreed with the suggestion. It was because Zhongxiong intends to sell the car which is enough to prove to me that he really wants to engage in business. This would make outsiders no longer think he is only interested in playing and was not a working person. Also, the car is not a necessary thing.  It had cost a great deal to have the car, and it took quite a lot of time to be a non-paid driver. But Kitty insisted that she should have it.

At noon, Mr. Chen Heng came and talked with us. Afterwards he invited me, Kitty, Guo Defeng and Ye Guiming (葉桂銘) to his new home. His apartment is situated in the fifteenth arrondissement of Paris. It only has two small rooms and one kitchen. The site is fine. Its price was only 700,000 francs. The total was 1,100,000 francs which would include his other expenditures of 200,000 francs, and then 200,000 francs for decoration.

In the evening, I installed a screen for the bookshelves in the cellar.

Dulles made a statement to the press yesterday criticizing what Bulganin and Khrushchev had said in Rangoon. He said this was action that alienated one person from another. He also explained the Joint Declaration with the Portuguese Foreign Minister last Friday with regard to Goa. He said the aim of the said declaration was “to lessen the emotionalism built up by the two Soviet leaders by their comments in Goa”. He also said that, according to the Portuguese constitution the residents of Goa are all Portuguese which was like Macao. Such an opinion of Dulles was really very wrong. The Joint Declaration is already unwise. Again, that he made such a statement really showed he was devoid of wisdom. No wonder Indian public opinion attacked him.

When Khrushchev made a speech in the Government Hall in Rangoon, he openly attacked the United States, Britain and France, saying that they had over and over again made concessions to Hitler. But on the contrary Hitler invaded them. He wondered if they wanted to play the same trick again and intended to manipulate West Germany for such purpose. Such tones have not been used in the past few years, something that is worth paying attention to.