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The Embankment apartments were occupied by the Nationalist army, which took over the top two floors, including the penthouse, for the placement of sandbags and machine guns. The tenants were moved to the lower floor, and it was here that a stand was made for about two days, just about the only serious conflict between Nationalists and Communists during Shanghai's occupation.
ELIZABETH FOYN San Francisco
Mutual Aid
Sir:
Your article in the June 15 issue regarding my son Jaime Laredo [Bolivian violinist winner of the Queen Elisabeth of Belgium International Music Competition] has a misinformation about the help received from the Bolivian government. Instead of $600 a year, it is $300 a month.
EDUARDO LAREDO
Honorary Consul of Bolivia in Philadelphia Philadelphia
Another Gilded Monk
The gilding of Chih Hang [June 8] is not the first, nor will it be the last such deification of a revered monk by a Chinese congregation. My favorite is that of Abbot Soong Chiu-cheng, who in death takes a much nicer picture than does Chih Hang [see cut}.
Abbot Soong headed the Tien Chen Cloister in Shanghai. He died at the age of 62 in 1942. What makes Abbot Soong unique that he predicted, a year before his death, not only the time of his death but the fact that his body would not decompose.
Like Chih Hang, Abbot Soong was sealed after death in stone urns, placed one on another. But he did not stay there any five years. After 76 days of a heat wave and the covering urn was removed, Soong was found to be in good condition. But one of the incense sticks that propped up his head had snapped (children playing in the cloister had bumped against the urns), and so now his head rests on his shoulder as if in sleep.
In the mid-autumn Festival of the Eighth Moon, some five months after Soong's death, his body was gilded by a member of his congregation. A red satin cloak was draped around his gilded shoulders, and he was placed in a glass case.
There he sat until the Communists came to Shanghai some ten years ago. Abbot Soong moved out just before the Pa Lu moved in, and where he sits now I do not know. But I believe his impoverished congregation, which moved with him, still reveres Abbot Soong — now as a god.
RICHARD P. WILSON JR. Batavia, N.Y.