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The China History Podcast

Ep. 115 | John Service (Part 1)

The China History Podcast

Laszlo Montgomery

Places & Travel, Society & Culture, History

4.81.2K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2013

⏱️ 47 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week we explore the life and times of John S. Service. This original “China Hand” was born in China and grew up in Chengdu and Shanghai. He went on to a brilliant career in the State Department serving in China as a Foreign Service officer during the Second Sino-Japanese War and throughout WWII. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey everyone, Las La Montgomery again, coming to you for the 115th time, exclusively, from the

0:07.7

China History Podcast.com.

0:10.6

Recently I ordered writer Lynn Joyner's 2009 work entitled Honorable Survivor, Mao's China, McCarthy's

0:20.0

America and the persecution of John S service. I don't know exactly why the life of

0:28.8

John's service particularly intrigued me. I knew of John's service back in my college days and that he was one of the famous China hands of the 1930s and 40s and that his name was included in the short list of those singled out for supposedly losing China.

0:46.4

Let me put the good old air quotes around the words losing China.

0:51.5

The more I read of Lynn Joyner's excellent book on the life of John's service,

0:57.0

the more I began to realize I think we might have the makings here of another one of those multi-part episodes that I've been putting out from time to time.

1:05.8

When I first considered the subject of John's service, I was thinking, how was I going to accumulate

1:12.2

enough factoids and interesting stuff on John's Services Life to fill a 30 minute

1:16.5

podcast episode.

1:18.6

Then I found Lynn Joyner's book and this led me to this and led me to that and now I'm already trying to rain in this one and not let it spin out of control.

1:27.0

And then in the middle of researching this topic I realized, man, this is the time to bring out Barbara

1:31.9

Tupman's still well in the American experience in China.

1:35.0

You see, in looking at the life and times of John's service, you sort of get five or six podcasts for the price of one.

1:44.0

There is a veritable cavalcade of stars who give the performances of their life during this wartime epic. There were the two principal sound stages where this

1:57.3

whole drama was played out that was Chong Ching, aka Chung King, and the other was Yan'an.

2:04.0

Then, once you threw Washington, D.C. into the mix, the drama sometimes descended into a three-ring

2:10.5

circus.

2:11.5

Now usually I will give you, at no additional charge to the basic

2:14.8

fee you're paying right now a list of Chinese terms from the episode so that you could follow

2:20.0

along and not get tripped up by any of the Pootong Hua.

...

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