NOTES AND QUERIES
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my first such expedition was I accompanied by anyone from the China Travel Service and that was simply because he knew the way, not because he had been ordered to check on my activities. I was never followed. Taxi drivers made out duplicate slips on each of my expeditions. They gave me a copy and kept the original (as they always do for every taxi ride). In my opinion Public Security cadres did not correlate—or even read—the slips from my many expeditions. One thing alone is of concern to cadres when it comes to tourists: foreign exchange. My taxi rides produced foreign exchange—though taxi fares are far less than in the United States or England. This is because there is only a minuscule charge for waiting; and the taxi often waited for me at a monastery for two or three hours.
The People's Government wishes the outside world to know that there is now freedom of worship in China. I found that there is freedom of worship and have even published a remarkable photograph to prove it. Thus I have helped Peking to undo the harm that was done to public opinion abroad in 1949-1976.
Harvard, Mass 1981
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HOLMES WELCH
CHINESE RELIGIOUS INVOLVEMENT WITH ISLAM
Since I wrote my Note on two examples of Chinese religious involvement with Islam on pages 199-202 of Volume 19 of the RAS(HK) Journal 1979, I have been fortunate enough to be able to purchase an image, some ten inches high, a typical Chinese altar figure, said to be off a Chinese temple altar in Surabaya on Java. It is of a middle-aged gentleman, dressed in songkok, sarong and a white shirt with cufflinks and removable buttons, worn outside the sarong. He also has white trousers under the sarong and is seated on a Chinese dragon-throne, a typical pose, decoration and carving of a Chinese deity from Fujian province.
The Chinese who sold it to me said that he had obtained it from the temple keeper in Surabaya as it was no longer needed. It depicted, so he was told, the former President of Indonesia, Dr. Sukarno, born in Surabaya in 1901 and died in 1970. The image had been carved and placed on the altar in a Chinese temple as an
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