Reginald Hunt: Two Years in Peking

Reginald Hunt: Two Years in Peking

In Club News, Homepage Top 4-7 by Stephen Perry

In this short but very interesting interview, Reginald Hunt, an old China hand and good friend of the 48 Group, gives a fascinating account of his two years teaching in China in the immediate run-up to the Cultural Revolution. He gives a rare insight into a world that appears to have vanished entirely, but which helped to shape today’s China in some profound ways.

 

Two Years in Peking 1965-66

Reginald Hunt and his wife both taught English at the Attached School of the Peking Foreign Languages Institute (now Beijing Foreign Languages Institute) between 1965-66, witnessing a significant period of Chinese history.

Reginald gives a historical glimpse of life for foreigners living in Peking during the mid-1960s, and their interactions with Chinese colleagues and Chinese society. It is an insight into a world which has long disappeared.