Notes from Old Nanking 1947-1949: The Great Transition

by Hamilton, William Stenhouse (2004), x+194pp., ISBN 1 74076 045 X.
AUD$27.23 (Including GST: AUD$29.95) (softcover )

China recently shot a man into the skies to girdle Earth. The old China of half a century ago, which Bill Hamilton recalls in this vivid memoir, was a different world. The Chinese blessing 'May you not live in interesting times' seems to have escaped him while an officer of The Australian Embassy at Nanjing (then known as Nanking, and the national capital of China) between May 1947 and October 1949. It was the time of the Great Transition from the rule of Chiang Kai-shek to Mao Tze-tung, from an addled self-styled Nationalist Peoples Party Government (the Kuomintang) to a Communist Government immured, at least initially, in a one-size-fits-all international dogma. To know the new China, start here with the old.