After World War II, overseas Chinese returned to Burma from evacuation, Chinese schools reopened one after another, and Chinese-language newspapers also began publishing again, including the China Daily, New Rangoon Daily, National Daily, People’s Daily, and others. With the chance to study again, Burmese Chinese children who had lost years of schooling were delighted. But books were scarce everywhere. Teaching materials were lacking, and children’s reading matter was especially hard to find.
In June 1946, Chen Zhaofu, newly returned to Rangoon from evacuation, went to teach at Peizhi Primary School in Moulmein, a Chinese school under teacher Shu Xu. In the classroom, Chen Zhaofu saw pupils spending all day bent over the only textbook they possessed, reading it again and again. He felt anxious and distressed. As soon as the term ended, he returned to Rangoon with the idea of starting a children’s publication, to provide students with a little “food for the spirit.”
Starting a Good Friend Weekly
Chen Zhaofu was an eager learner, ambitious and willing to act. He had attended only teachers’ college and had never studied books such as Journalism or An Introduction to Editing, but he had confidence that he could learn through practice and improve his knowledge of editing as he worked.
Before the war, schools had various books of Chinese culture published by the Commercial Press, such as the Young Children’s Library and the Primary School Students’ Library. When the Japanese invaders marched in, all of it vanished. So when he taught composition, he selected good student essays and posted them on the blackboard for everyone to read. When enough strong pieces accumulated, he had the students copy them neatly, bind them into booklets, give them titles, and place them on the newspaper rack in the school office as extracurricular reading.
At the suggestion of Xue Dayuan, chief editorial writer of the National Daily, and Wang Jingzhong, director of its news section, they proposed starting a children’s weekly. Chen Zhaofu heard the idea and thought, “Exactly what I had in mind.” The three of them formed the editorial group for Good Friend and, on barren ground, opened up a “children’s garden.”
Good Friend appeared once a week. From December 1947 to August 1948, thirty-three issues were published. Together with a special Children’s Day supplement, there were thirty-four issues in all.
Good Friend Weekly was one of the supplements of the large newspaper National Daily. Its executive editor, Chen Zhaofu, was observant, thoughtful, and flexible in page design. The weekly won the affection and support of teachers and students at Chinese schools throughout Burma. As Chen Zhaofu later wrote in his recollections: “The little publication moved forward with the current of a great age and fulfilled the mission it was meant to carry out.”
The Content and Writers of Good Friend
Good Friend Weekly was intended for primary school pupils and first-year junior middle school students. Naturally, its articles had to suit readers of that age. Its main purposes were to spread knowledge, encourage writing, and raise cultural understanding. Its pages were arranged as follows:
The first page carried the editor’s note, explaining the weekly’s purpose and editorial matters, written by the editor.
The second page carried informational material, such as informal talks on nature, introductions to geography, and historical stories.
The third page was “Good Friend Park.” It was written by young contributors and published submissions from students at different schools, encouraging young writers to observe life, practice actively, and have the courage to write.
The fourth page was devoted to people. Chen Zhaofu did the work himself, reading widely and compiling short biographies of scientists such as Zhan Tianyou, Nobel, Faraday, Pasteur, Darwin, Watt, Madame Curie, and others. He tried to vary the forms: fairy tales, stories, poems, essays, original writing and translations mixed together. The weekly published translations of Aesop’s Fables and an abridged translation of the British children’s work The King of the Golden River. Its geography material introduced Fujian, Guangdong, Yunnan, Hubei, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hunan, and other provinces.
Good Friend’s Large Group of Young Writers
“Good Friend Park” was entirely devoted to works by young authors. According to the records, there were more than 130 submissions in all, from about twenty schools. There were fifty-eight young writers, twenty-eight of them from the rural settlements.
At first, the editor contacted teachers at schools in Rangoon and asked them to select and send in outstanding student compositions. Students from the rural settlements mailed theirs in bundle after bundle. Schools, teachers, and parents all supported the effort, though each had a different consideration in mind.
The schools thought it would be best to publish compositions that other schools “could not match.” Teachers thought student essays should be corrected before being sent to the newspaper office. Parents thought it was a good thing if their own child could have an article printed in the paper. The editor, meanwhile, hoped to publish manuscripts in their “original flavor,” so that young writers could see in print something truly written by themselves, awaken an interest in writing, build confidence, and keep writing from then on.
What pleased Chen Zhaofu most was that, generally speaking, the works were full of a child’s own delight and spirit. Most pieces in “Good Friend Park” were only around a hundred Chinese characters long, though some exceeded a thousand. These included “A Wrong Action,” “Playing Truant,” “Our School,” “Books I Read During Vacation,” and “Remembering Burma’s Independence Day.”
Children wrote about themselves. Naturally, the pieces were true, lively, and full of childhood feeling. Young readers loved them, and adult readers—teachers, parents, relatives, and friends—loved them too.
A Brief Bloom, Its Fragrance Remaining
The appearance of Good Friend Weekly in postwar Rangoon was like a green shoot sprouting in a dry desert. Especially in those days, publications relied heavily on “scissors editing”—cutting articles from newspapers and magazines from China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. One’s own children are always dearest. Although the level of Burmese Chinese children’s writing was quite low when judged through adult eyes, it was plain, familiar, and intimate, and so the work was welcomed.
In postwar Rangoon, books were scarce everywhere, and the Chinese schools being rebuilt one after another had no libraries. Good Friend was like a welcome downpour.
Unfortunately, of the three-person Good Friend group, Xue Dayuan left midway, Wang Jingzhong became occupied with telecommunications work, and the new chief editorial writer gave the publication little attention. Chen Zhaofu could not support it alone. Good Friend became an epiphyllum flower: it opened suddenly and faded just as quickly. Yet its fragrance deserves to remain in the history of Burmese Chinese journalism and publishing.
A few more words about Mr. Chen Zhaofu. In 1951, he left Burma and returned to China to continue his studies in the Department of Philosophy at Yenching University. After graduation, he joined the Commercial Press, where he worked until retirement. He now lives in Beijing.
Originally published in the San Francisco World Journal, January 3, 2007.