My lovely Chinese friends – by GEORGE BRAINE In the late 1960s, Peoples’ Publishing House, in Slave Island, advertised a list of Chinese periodicals at bargain prices, and I dropped in and bought a subscription to China Pictorial, a large, colorful, monthly magazine. The annual subscription was only Rs. 10, and even I could afford that! In those days of black-and-white newspapers and magazines, when most news stories came from the West, China Pictorial was a welcome change. Filled with colorful, large photos of dancing troupes, farmers in their fields and fish ponds, young “pioneers” in red scarves, soldiers and ballet dancers in heroic poses, steam powered trains and their drivers, and – the main attraction for me – young, smiling, Chinese women, all in pigtails. It was pure propaganda, of course, but I had no inkling how this knowledge would come in handy 40 years later. Shumin The first ...

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