Kiwi barn ching trip Friday Oct. 90 Left Peking with Harry Caldwell at 8:30 A.M. on the Peking-Sanyuan line for Feng-tung. The trip was like all other travelling in these trains and we rode mostly in the dining cars. At Kulgan where the train halted for 15 min., we were met by Chas. Colman who had a new model tent for our servants, which had been made at Kulgan. We reached Feng- tung the end of the P.R. at 9:30 P.M. in a drizzling rain. After being questioned by three Chinese soldiers as to the object of our visit we went to a good inn a few hundred yards from the station. The soldiers were extremely pleasant and polite, a great exception to the general run of the breed, and seemed satisfied when we told them we were on a shooting trip for ducks & geese. Our passports had not been vised for Shansi nor did we have gum permits (a new regulation) but we were confident that we could bluff our way. I have learned after considerable experience that the least effort to do with officials when travelling in the interior of China, the less one will suffer from annoyance. The magistrates are so fearful lest some harm befall a foreigner travelling in their district & they themselves will thereby get into difficulties with those 'higher up' that immovable and usually fictitious objections are forthcoming.