Irene Eng The Kibbitzer

Five leather-bound books, Reagan’s diaries during his presidency are being published for the first time this month by HarperCollins, which I believe still an American company. Few years ago I found a gigantic set of books sat on the simple and crude St. Johns’ library (sorry for saying so, but compare to NY Public Library, Columbia and Harvard, St. Johns’ library is really like a dump, my little town’s library is more homey and appealing, I’m not kidding) red hard cover all heavily dusted, 29 volumes in total - 宫中档光绪朝奏折   Secret Palace Memorials of Kuang-Hsü Period.  Kuang-Hsü or in pinyin Guangxu Emperor (1871-1908) was the second to last Emperor (the last emperor Puyi (1906-1967) only got to reign for 3 years, from 1908 to 1911, then more or less being ruled by red Emperor Mao for the rest of his life.) to rule over the Middle Kingdom, from 1875-1908.  My interest on them of course was the memorials between the Emperor and two of my great great grandfathers.  Many of them I’ve seen elsewhere, but what stunned me was the resources that made this publication possible in 1973: by Ford Foundation. Heaven, I just simply can’t believe Taiwan government would allow this to happen. What were they thinking? Jiang Jieshi stole the treasures and locked it up, then let …. after brief mixed feeling, I realized that the heist might had saved those treasures from the annihilation of red guards during the Cultural Revolution.  Taiwan obviously didn’t have the funding, but they could have turned to HK (ok, not sure back in 1973 HK was the same as it is today..) ..  I was bit insulted by the fact that we needed a foreign aid to publish the most cherished document; but grateful to the Americans for making it possible. …  How about 30 years after Bush leaves the White House and his diaries or docus is being published by Xinhua Press or 三联书店?

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