In early 1937 I arrived in Nanking (as it was then called), China. I was twenty-four years old and knew no one, but I was armed with letters of introduction. My purpose: adventure. I wanted a Pearl Buck’s-eye-view of China and believed that actually living there was the way to get it. I hoped to find a modest secretarial job to keep me going.

Smith College had a campus in Nanking, and my letters introduced me to members of the faculty there (some called them missionaries), an elite group of families among whom Pearl Buck had lived.

At teas to which I was invited, I met women whose husbands were seeking office help, and a job turned up that exceeded my wildest dreams. The Chinese government’s Ministry of Railways, looking for Western investors, was publishing a magazine, The Quarterly Review of Chinese Railways , to showcase its achievements. I was hired to edit the manuscripts submitted by Chinese writers. I worked at the ministry among English-speaking Chinese without another foreigner in sight.

In July the Japanese invaded; they came in at the Marco Polo Bridge in the north and began to seize the railways. The ministry evacuated Nanking for Shanghai. My job ended. But not my adventure. Under wartime conditions I married H. J. Timperley, an Australian who had lived in Peking for many years and was a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian . We proceeded to set up housekeeping in Shanghai. Heady stuff. He was in constant touch with the Chinese and the British as he sent his dispatches to the Guardian . At Thanksgiving I had dinner with Edgar Snow and his wife while Tim was in Hong Kong.

Since my husband was now traveling so much and conditions were so uncertain (in August, Shanghai was inadvertently bombed by its own Chinese planes), it was decided that I would go home as soon as a ship was available. In February 1938 I boarded the Empress of Russia en route to Vancouver.

The next part of the story I described in a letter to my parents written aboard the Canadian Pacific Railway as I headed for Des Moines, Iowa:

“Now I come to what should probably have come first since it is by all odds the most startling part of this letter, namely the enclosures. You can talk about the letters as much as you please, but do be careful that nothing goes down in black and white. The same thing has already been sent to men who will handle the publication if any publishing is to be done. While the Japanese are ruling with such an arbitrary hand in Nanking, it is not safe to have the record appear in black and white that these men are letting out these true but damaging tales about them. It’s to Japan’s best interest that no such word