The Ottawa Journal from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • Page 115

(SgdedsGsioq GDHDQIpglini in- 4 WeeWnd Mogoiin Jan 12. 1771 China's incredible and violent "cultural revolution" caught the mass of Chinese by as much surprise as it did foreigners. Here, David Oancia, a Canadian correspondent who spent 31 months in Peking, recalls the turmoil that led to the new China a nation, he says, that must be accepted by the UN Correspondent Oancia in Feking. By David Oancia TWO MEMORIES are landmarks in my stint as the only resident non-communist North American correspondent in Peking. The first is of a farewell party in the Montreal Men's Press Club on the eve of my departure in September, 1965, to take up my posting on the other side of the world.

Ed Mc-Nally of The Montreal Star drew the picture that was my parting gift from the colleagues and friends. Everyone present autographed that drawing and it hung on my office wall all through the turbulence that ripped through the most populous nation on earth? Neither Ed nor I then realized just how prophetic was that picture. It portrayed me clinging desperately to a dragon that had gone on the rampage. The second memory is of a meeting during my final weeks in Peking in April, 1968. The conversation with the person I had come to consider my friend was stiffly formal, one result of the thrusting of the most populous nation on earth into the pressure-cooker atmosphere of what was called the "great proletarian cultural But our friendship persisted and we met to say goodbye.

Both of us then were numbed by the weariness and the 1 from merely watching and coping with minor crises as I tried to report what was happening; my friend, both from a job done with unflinching dedication and from the thought remolding that had been intensified and had become a more prominent feature of Chinese life with the launching of the cultural revolution. Continued David Oancia 1 6' a 0 9 0.