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The story of the creation of China Books and Periodicals is reprinted by permission from Henry Noyes, "China Syndrome," chapter 4 of China Born: Adventures of a Maverick Bookman (San Francisco: China Books & Periodicals, Inc., 1989). See also Him Mark Lai, "The Changing Roles Played by China Books and Periodicals," this volume, page 44.
A CHALLENGE
The year 1959 was a turning point in our lives, a year when we were called upon to use all the ingenuity and experience we had accumulated in a lifetime. On 1 October, by coincidence China's National Day, our longtime friend Paul Romaine phoned me to say, "Henry, I hear you're no longer working at Pettibone Mulliken."
"That's correct. When I applied there three years ago for a job in the tool-and-die department, I neglected to put down my university education on the application form."
"They fired you for that?"
"No, not really. The real reason, I was a shop steward, filed and won too many grievances, and also locked horns with the works manager in bargaining sessions. Now I've had to file my own grievance with the Machinists' Union and the Labor Relations Board. But they're slow to act."
"You think you'll get your job back?"
"Not a prayer. The cards are stacked."
"Then I have something here that might interest you: a letter from Imported Publications and Products in New York. They supply me, as you know, with books and magazines from the Foreign Languages Press in Peking."
"What's the deal?" I was excited without yet knowing why.
"If you come down to the shop this afternoon I'll tell you more."
Paul Romaine ran the only independent bookshop in downtown Chicago. He handled bestsellers and popular fiction to pay the rent, but his chief interest was in progressive publications and his store was known as the best place in town for avant-garde books and magazines. Despite the inquisition of Senator Joseph McCarthy, symptomatic of the deepening freeze of civil liberties in the cold war period, Paul continued to handle radical writers of the 1930s: John Steinbeck, Agnes Smedley, Jack Conroy, Clifford Odets. As liberal leaders of the New Deal became McCarthy's special targets for political assassination, left-led coalitions and united fronts dwindled. In Chicago the Abraham...