Reading Chinese Tea Leaves
Crane, Sylvia E.
READING CHINESE TEA LEAVES SYLVIA E. CRANE Are the "Gang of Four" capitalist roaders? Reading the Chinese tea leaves has become a favorite American pastime since the death of Chairman...
...His second wife, the mother of his three sons, had been captured and tortured during the war and eventually executed by warlord forces...
...The only visible presence of the Roman Catholic Church in mainland China today is one church in Peking, described as a "showcase" for Communist toleration of religion in the People's Republic...
...He said the church is administered by lay persons, all of whom are Communists and who control the clergy...
...Listed in the Vatican yearbook as "imprisoned for the faith," he is the last bishop known to be named for the China mainland...
...Huang was returning at the time to his post at the United Nations as chief delegate of the Chinese People's Republic, which he assumed in the autumn of 1971 when the Nationalists of Taiwan were ousted...
...A quick perusal of the yearbook's listing of residential Sees in China (over 125) results largely in a confrontaROBERT L. JOHNSTON is a member o] the staff o] Religous News Service...
...Ch'ing until after she became pregnant, because his colleagues strongly disapproved...
...That was in 1958 and it came following the election of Pope John XXIII to the papacy...
...Even as late as 1975, at the National People's Congress, she was denied the votes needed to become Minister of Culture, a prize she coveted...
...The last "official" communication to Rome from a Catholic ecclesiastic in China was a letter from Father Dominic Chen, O.F.M., Apostolic Administrator of Suihsien, Hupeh province...
...Huang and his wife, Ho Li-liang, a highly educated fellow revolutionary, founded the UN mission and hosted numerous parties, especially notable being the celebrations of Chinese "liberation day" which became a popular event in New York...
...She travelled extensively in China in 1976 on a several-week visit during which she saw many old triends in Peking and Shanghai...
...For three years beginning in 1950, Huang headed foreign affairs in Shanghai...
...The reunion was touching...
...She was generally disliked, but Mao was lonely...
...All other religious activity from that nation's rather miniscule Catholic population (some sources estimate it between 1 and 2 million) are non-existent or underground...
...He was preceded by a team oF doctors, acupuncturists and nurses who had been dispatched by Chairman Mao to ease his friend's mortal pain...
...He was educated at Yenching University in Peking in the mid-30's where he met Edgar Snov, and acted as his interpreter in gathering material for Red Star Over China...
...In 1940, Mao divorced a third wife whose health was impaired by the rig6rs of the Long March...
...He was sent as China's chief negotiator at the peace talks at Panmunjom in 1953, moving to Geneva the next year, where the terms coneluding the Korean War were signed...
...The priest, identified as Father Fu Tin-shan, is one of about ten clergy who serve the lone Peking Catholic church and he exhibits a strange amalgam of Catholic background and Communist orientation...
...The stocky, greying Foreign Minister, Huang Hua, is an old Chinese revolutionary, a younger colleague of the founding fathers...
...24 lune 1977:394...
...He had entered diplomatic work directly after the Communist accession to power...
...Mao postponed his fourth marriage to Chiang SYLVIA E. CRANE is a daughter-in-law o] former Ambassador to China, the late Charles R. Crane...
...The Vatican yearbook still lists three archbishops and 17 bishops in mainland China, but L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican daily newspaper, only last year estimated that no more than a dozen Catholic prelates are still alive in mainland China and the indication was that none is visibly active in an episcopal role...
...From this vantage point, he also performed liaison services for Americans desiring visas to visit China...
...Father Raymond de Jaegher, a former missionary in China now working in New York, explained that the Peking church is really the old Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, maintained by the government for the convenience of diplomats and foreign visitors...
...Several are known to be in prison and several others have "retired...
...One reason is that Chiao is said to have enjoyed friendships with the Shanghai "Gang of Four," which includes Mao's widow, Chiang Ch'ing, who is the butt of attack by the new moderate leadership...
...While he remains celibate, celebrates the pre-Vatiean II Tridentine Latin Mass, administers Holy Communion and hears confessions, he totally accepts divorce and abortion and claims that the Vatican--to which he claims allegiance--"has always been a tool of imperialism...
...In the late '30s, Chiang Ch'ing arrived in Yenan from Shanghai where she had been a movie starlet...
...There is much to study at the bottom of the cup, chief among them the appointment of China's UN delegate, Huang Hua as Foreign Minister to succeed Chiao Kuan-hua...
...A life-long friendship ensued...
...Otherwise, Huang concentrated his social life tactfully within a small circle of Commonweal: J93 American China hands whom he had met when they lived and worked in China...
...Three years earlier, Pope Pius XII appointed a bishop for the diocese of Yutze, a Franciscan named Father Anthony H. Yang Kuang C'hi, but it is not known for certain if he was ever officially ordained to the episcopacy...
...READING CHINESE TEA LEAVES SYLVIA E. CRANE Are the "Gang of Four" capitalist roaders...
...She is an American historian and author who writes on politics [or European magazines, notably Esprit in Paris and Astrolabio in Rome...
...1, 1977, it would increase Chinese-language broadcasts aimed at the People's Republic of China, Taiwan and other Chinese-speaking peoples, but there is no indications of a warming trend in the cool atmosphere that surrounds the question of possible diplomatic---or any othermrapprochement between the Holy See and the Communist giant of Asia...
...He came to the UN from a diplomatic post at Ottawa, where he was China's Ambassador...
...He directed his country's Foreign Ministry Departments for Western Europe and Africa for several years before going abroad again in 1960 as Ambassador to Ghana...
...He was abroad for years, automaticaUy avoiding entanglement with internal factions...
...Reading the Chinese tea leaves has become a favorite American pastime since the death of Chairman Mao Tse-tung...
...In early February, 1972, as Edgar Snow lay dying of cancer in his home near Geneva, Switzerland, Huaag Hua stopped for a few days' visit on his way to New York from Africa...
...He made valuable contacts throughout West Africa, established embassies in Tanzania, Zambia, and elsewhere, and culminated his African career as Ambassador to Cairo...
...Huang's credentials for heading the Foreign Ministry are manifest...
...news service correspondent that he loves the late Mao Tse-tung more than God because Mao "stopped our suffering" and changed the whole of China...
...During the Cultural Revolution, Chiang Ch'ing misused her position as wife of the Chairman and imposed strict censorship of all artistic productions, transforming traditional opera, dance and theater into revolutionary vehicles...
...tion with blank spaces where the names of bishops should be and more blank spaces where the statistics of the diocese belong...
...This change is one of many involved in the dismissal of the now notorious "Gang of Four...
...On the personal Ievel, his confidential relationship with both Mao and Chou, on a par also with THE CHURCH IN CHINA ROBERT L. JOHNSTON Vatican Radio recently announced that beginning Jan...
...He returned home after a decade's absence to find the Cultural Revolution in full sway, and devoted a year's time orienting himself to it before embarking on his next stint abroad, which brought him to the American continent...
...What do these changes portend in fore.;gn policy as well as domestically...
...She promptly curried Mao's favor, sitting at his feet as a devout student of his revolutionary thought...
...Why was Huang Hua appointed to succeed Chiao Kuan-hua as Foreign Minister when both men were close associates of both Mao and the late Prime Minister, Chou En-lai...
...He added that all legitimate bishops in China are either "underground," in prison, or working quietly among the people...
...Only last December, one of a few priests still functioning-at the Peking churchwtold a U.S...
...It was a pledge of fealty to the new pontiff...
Vol. 104 • June 1977 • No. 13
