Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2009 | Page 29

INTERVIEW

life

Joyful,” he grins. “But whenever a foreign
read and write.”
ambassador left Peking he often offered his
He still has his Chinese 5000 word dictionary,
cellar to the head of our mission and it was
as well as hundreds of little cards, each of
passed down the ranks.”
which has a Chinese character painted by his
This wasn’t Bert’s first posting. He had come
teacher denoting the words Bert had learnt.
from Singapore and before that Jakarta, so
“Pamphlets which had been dropped from
he’d already got a taste for things oriental; a