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Notes on Sources

This memoir is based on a lifetime of notes taken, diaries written, and letters home preserved by careful parents and returned after their deaths. Taking good notes was part and parcel of many of my Foreign Service assignments, and I became addicted to the practice, finding even now that I cannot listen carefully unless my hand is moving on paper. Dutifully, I destroyed or handed in notes that were truly sensitive; but I kept many others in the belief that someday I might write some history, the subject I loved the most as a child and still do now.

The result is this volume, peculiarly my own to answer for. No one else bears responsibility of any kind. I drew on a number of books to make sure I had the context right and my facts straight. Brandon Grove’s riveting Behind Embassy Walls helped me capture the first weeks as an A-100 Foreign Service trainee. We were classmates, and his example also helped me persevere with this memoir. John Holdridge’s Crossing the Divide and Marshall Green’s contribution to War and Peace with China were solid reference points by former bosses who supervised my work during years in Hong Kong, Washington, and Beijing. Window on the Forbidden City: The Beijing Diaries of David Bruce, 1973–1974 was especially helpful in documenting Liaison Office days. The Diaries quote fully from reports that I wrote for Bruce’s signature, placing them in the public record and obviating the need for me to get them cleared. Naturally, I had to read the memoirs of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, if only to assure that the ant tracks I traced did not wander too far off the broad paths set forth by those who had moved the world. I read Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World to make sure that Margaret MacMillan had not written my book. Happily, my perspective is totally different, although I was pleased by the extent she drew on oral histories from key colleagues like Winston Lord, produced by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training. About Face by James Mann helped me with background on military relations during the post-Nixon years.

Other key sources first and foremost included my wife Sheila, a devoted diarist herself, who shared the life of which I write. The Three Tigers, sons Adam, Oliver, and Nick Jr, added pungent comments of their own about my writing skills and our family experience in Mao’s China. Mary-Hart Bartley, my executive assistant during Asia Society days and still, helped me put together the final chapters of the China Boys saga. Peter Frost, the notable Asia studies professor at Williams College and the University of Mississippi, who won perseverance awards for reading not only one, but two of my drafts, provided scholarly insight and encouragement. I am also grateful to Columbia University’s Rachel DeWoskin, author of Foreign Babes in Beijing, who saw an early draft and added a valuable, younger-generation New China perspective.

This volume draws only on material relevant to my experience with China. There is more, much more about experiences in Washington, Africa, the Philippines, and Pakistan. I will get to them if I live long enough among people who are interested.

The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training deserves my special thanks for choosing this memoir as part of their ADSTDACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series, allowing me to join treasured colleagues and bosses in the telling of their tales. I am indebted to their caring and careful editor, Margery B. Thompson, for her patient guidance.

China Boys