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Thursday, 11 March

Grace Boynton, head of the Women's College division of the English department, taking a year of belated language study out in a country village, came in this morning to go over some problems with me about next year's work. She stayed to lunch and we had a nice party.

I went up to school, listened to a most enlightening and entertaining lecture on Chinese music by Chao Yuan-jen, and then went to Wen Yu Hui. Grover Clark spoke on some reasons for the differences between East and West, finding most of the differences due to early difference between people getting their food from agriculture primarliy, and those getting it with less ease from hunting. It is an interesting thesis, if not entirely water-tight. There was a long and lively discussion and disagreement was common, but no one had facts which alone can disprove the contentions. Tom was at the Wen Yu Hui with me and we walked home together, then read for a while waiting for our wives to return from their evening at the movies. 

I finished reading Lewis' [[Underlined]] Arrowsmith [[Underlined]] tonight, and while I think the look is not a great one, and that the characters and situations are a bit too overdrawn at times I have seldom had a book or scenes from a book make such an impression on me. The death of the hero's first wifehaunts me three or four days later. 

Friday, 12 March 

This is the anniversary of the death of Sun Yat Sen, so we had a holiday. I worked in the morning. There is a snarl between a teacher and a class in Freshman English to iron out, and then the schedule for next year had to be made and checked with the registrar's committee. I went up tot School, made a few pictures, was met by my wife, and left. We went out to have lunch at a Chinese restaurant, house hunted, and came home by way of the Tung An Shih CH'ang where we spent a dollar or two. 

Late in the afternoon Alan Priest's erstwhile roommate, Fu Hsi Hua, came in to see me, and Dorothy went to call on Mrs. Ferguson. We spent the evening at home.