y separately published work icon Willow Pattern Walkabout single work   prose   travel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1959... 1959 Willow Pattern Walkabout
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

In 1959 the Daily News (Perth) newspaper, q.v., sponsored columnist Kirwan Ward and cartoonist Paul Rigby, q.q.v., in making a cultural visit to China. This was arguably one of the first visits to Communist China by Westerners since World War II; Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and U.S. President Richard Nixon did not visit China until 1972. The visit by Ward and Rigby resulted in the book, Willow Pattern Walkabout.

Notes

  • Authors' note: If you are so far over on the Right or Left wings that, from where you sit, you can't see the middle, you're not going to like this book. Before the mad mullahs of McCarthyism have flipped half a dozen pages they are going to find some sentence, some cartoon that doesn't unequivocally ridicule, or damn, China, and they're going to holler 'The poor suckers have fallen for the old conducted-tour confidence trick; they've been brainwashed.' And the foam-flecked members of the lunatically Left soapbox set, noticing the odd hint, here and there, that Mao the messiah hasn't yet led his people to a party paradise, are going to set up and squawk that we are nothing but the hired lackers of capitalism. We have compiled our report of what we saw in China in the belief that there are important numbers of sane people in the centre who still like to hear both sides of any story.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 22 Jun 2009 11:55:32
Subjects:
  • c
    China,
    c
    East Asia, South and East Asia, Asia,
  • 1959
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