Brian L. Evans - Pursuing China: Memoir of a Beaver Liaison Officer

Published by
The University of Alberta Press
Ring House 2
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
T6G 2E1
www.uap.ualberta.ca.

Copyright 2012 Brian L. Evans

ISBN 9780888646156

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Evans, Brian L., 1932

Pursuing China : memoir of a beaver liason officer / Brian L. Evans.

Includes bibliographical references.
Electronic monograph in ePub format.
Issued also in print format, ISBN 9780888646002

1.ChinaHistory1976-2002.

2.ChinaHistory2002-.

3.ChinaForeign relationsCanada.

4.CanadaForeign relationsChina.

5.Diplomatic and consular service, CanadianBiography.

6.College teachersCanadaBiography.

I.Title.

DS779.29.E93A3 2012 951.05092 C2011-907315-3

All rights reserved.
First edition, first printing, 2012. First electronic edition, 2012.
Digital Conversion by Transforma Pvt. Ltd.
Copyediting and Proofreading by Kirsten Craven.
Indexing in the print edition by Adrian Mather.
Cover design by Jason Dewinitz.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written consent. Contact the University of Alberta Press for further details.

The University of Alberta Press gratefully acknowledges the support received for its publishing program from The Canada Council for the Arts. The University of Alberta Press also gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) and the Government of Alberta through the Alberta Multimedia Development Fund (AMDF) for its publishing activities.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

What sparks an interest in a youngsters mind? How long-lasting is an interest once sparked? In my case, it was China, an interest sparked by a childhood friendship with a young Chinese Canadian boy named Herbert How. This memoir is an attempt to illustrate the consequences of that interest sparked over seven decades ago.

Were it not for the persistence of Patricia Fong, the following pages would have been unlikely to have seen print. Patricia, a fellow Taberite, but much younger, thought my life experiences worthy of an audience. To prove otherwise, I prepared a draft memoir for her to read. To my genuine surprise, this only whetted her appetite and she insisted that I add more detail. I did so in the spring and early summer of 2009 while I was undergoing radiation treatment for prostate cancer. This second draft took on the guise of a confession. I decided to ask the advice of another friend, Merrill Distad, as to what to do with it. He generously read the manuscript and became an enthusiast. He suggested some changes and advised me to try the University of Alberta Press as a possible publisher. Linda Cameron, the director of the press, agreed to have a look at the text, which now included Distads suggestions, and ultimately she and her colleagues decided to send it to outside readers. Meanwhile, I circulated the manuscript to Debbie Forsyth and Ginette Lamontagne, both close friends, for their reactions. They shared Distads enthusiasm with one or two small caveats. The anonymous, outside readers were more muted in their opinions but raised no insurmountable obstacles or objections to publication. Throughout this time, the various drafts always included the subtitle, Memoir.

In the spring of 2010, the editorial board of the press suggested that the manuscript should be revised to make it less of a memoir and more of a history of ChinaCanada relations. I reworked the manuscript in the summer, but I was not happy with itI was wedded to the original chronology. I solicited the opinions of two more friends, Pat Prestwich and Jane Haslett. Each independently rejected the new formulation in favour of a memoir, while Prestwich made substantive editorial suggestions, most of which I incorporated before resubmitting the manuscript to the press. In September 2010, Cameron and University of Alberta Press Managing Editor Peter Midgley sent it off to freelance editors at Craven Editorial for an opinion. To my great joy, after reading it through, Meaghan Craven opined that the manuscript should be reworked to transform it back into a chronological memoir. The University of Alberta Press accepted this view and placed me in the hands of Kirsten Craven, with the result that you now hold in your hands. Nearly all of the photos were taken by me or by members of my family, with some enhanced by my friend Gordon Elbrond. Alan Brownoff has made them fit for publication.

To each of the individuals mentioned above, I owe debts of gratitude for their encouragement, suggestions, and efforts to make the manuscript better. In addition, I have been urged on in this endeavour by friends on both sides of the Pacific: Brian Harris, Josh Bilyk, Murray Douglas, Gordon Houlden, Terry Mackey, Sharon Mah, Victor Rajudko, Lynn Ogden, Wang Bing, Liu Guangtai, Chen Qineng, and Jiang Peng. Throughout, I have relied upon my constant companion, MOOKIE . I, of course, accept full responsibility for the content and opinions contained between these covers.

Finally, I will add this note on the text. In China, family names appear first. Thus, for example, Wang Qijiangs surname is Wang. Throughout the text, the system known as pinyin is used for Chinese words and names, with the exception of Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek, and Peking duck, whose names became popular in the West through an earlier system of transliteration.

BRIAN L. EVANS

Edmonton, Alberta

The Year of the Rabbit

ONE * * * *

Prairie Roots

A WHITE ASH YOUTH

In 1932, when I was born, my father was already broke. A Welshman, miner, insurance salesman, and World War I veteran who was mustard gassed twice, Evan Evans was advised by his doctor to find a climate drier than Britains. In 1920 he married Dora Lines, an Englishwoman who was also a war veteran, and sailed for Canada, settling on the arid prairie of southern Alberta. The climate was certainly drier than that of Britain, but much colder. Evan nearly died each winter when his mustard-scalded lungs filled with phlegm. Dora, raised in the brilliant green lands of Suffolk, found herself surrounded by brown grass, cacti, and Russian thistle that provided shelter for gophers, rattlesnakes, and all manner of bugs and beetles. Moreover, the westerly wind that blew daily from dawn to dusk annoyed her ears. She was deaf, the result of a childhood illness.

I was the youngest of four children born at three- to four-year intervals. Evan, born in 1921 in Lethbridge, and I, born in Taber, bracketed our two sisters, Gwen and Mary, born in 1924 and 1928 in Cardston. Taber, Alberta, where the family moved in the fall of 1928, was the familys final stop in our fathers search to find prosperity in the mining business. Once a thriving mining town with eleven active coal mines, Taber had passed its peak when Evan invested his remaining cash in the Bay mine located directly north of the town. Along with two farmers, who invested a couple thousand each, my father invested around a thousand dollars in the mine, only to find that it flooded and was unworkable. His partners then quit, leaving my father low and wet, so to speak. Added to this, the expansion of the Drumheller coal fields, the onslaught of the Great Depression, and the discovery of sufficient natural gas in the area to enable the town to heat homes and businesses pretty well put paid to the coal business, at least as far as my father was concerned. He turned to farming in the spring of 1932, moving the family to a house and a quarter section of farm land four miles north of Taber. This move would leave my parents with no visible means of support. The land was no prize with its barren soil, and the house was actually one of three buildings that remained from the Regal Colliery, a large mining enterprise on a site called White Ash, so named because of the colour of the residue from the burned coal. I was born in that house with the assistance of a Belgian midwife.