Interviewing William van Gulik, the eldest son of Dr. R. H. van Gulik, was a rather convoluted process.

The National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden was undergoing repair work at the time and the director was extremely busy, so we arranged to see him bright and early before the museum opened. Arriving there as planned, we were met instead by Mr. Ken Vos, the head of the Japanese section, who said that the director had just received news of the death of his father-in-law and had rushed home to handle arrangements, and he was afraid the director wouldn't be able to find time for an interview for the time being.

We kept trying over the next three weeks or more and finally worked out an appointment with him one hour before a weekend lecture. During the interview we learned that the director's mother and the widow of R. H. van Gulik, Shui Shih-fang, who lives in retirement in Spain, was coming to Leiden the next day to see her family.

In the eyes of their eldest son, who was born in China and always remained closest to his parents, his mother's life has been in no way less remarkable than that of his world-renowned father.

Shui Shih-fang, whose forebears hail from Funing in Kiangsu province, was born in Peking. Her father, Shui Chun-shao, like van Gulik, was a diplomat in his early years and was said to have been accompanied by 45 carloads of assistants and thirty or forty cooks on a posting to St. Petersburg. He later served as the director of the Peking-Tientsin Railway Department and as mayor of Tientsin.

As the eighth of ten children, Shui Shih-fang didn't have much chance to see her father. Conversations with him, we heard, were limited to the "Everything okay?" "Just fine." variety.

She received a strict education at home and graduated from Mu-cheng High School, a noted school for girls. Yenching and Tsinghua universities were closed because of the war, so she attended Changsha Provisional University, the predecessor to Southwest United University, and later earned a degree in history and sociology from Chilu University.

After graduation, she began working at the Dutch embassy in Chungking. She married van Gulik, who was serving there as a diplomatic officer, in 1943.

"I'm so happy! It's been a long time since I've spoken Chinese," were the first words Madame van Gulik said when we met her. She shook our hands as though she were greeting long-lost friends.

Her Mandarin was soft and pleasant. According to Director van Gulik, a Chinese acquaintance of theirs once remarked with surprise that she had maintained the usage and intonations of the 1930s, and had even asked to record some tapes of her for safekeeping.

With the exception of her accent, Madame van Gulik for several decades led a life of nothing but change.

"We must have moved house at least ten times in the Hague alone," she recalls. The Hague they considered their "fixed place of residence," so you can imagine something of what it must have been like.

After marrying in Chungking, they returned to the Hague in 1945. They had just settled down and she had started to study Dutch at home when van Gulik was transferred to the United States two years later. Less than a year after that he was posted to Tokyo. And then came Indonesia, Lebanon, Malaysia...nowhere more than three years at a time.

Forty-some years ago, for a young woman born in a traditional family, marrying a "foreigner" must have been quite an unusual event. But the way she puts it is, "He wasn't a foreigner!" She says with emphasis, "Since the day I met him until the day he died, never a day went by that he didn't practice his calligraphy. He loved yuan-chung sausage and Szechwan cooking. He really was a Chinese."

In many respects, van Gulik was indeed more Chinese than the Chinese. Besides mastering the traditional scholarly accomplishments of the lute, the game of go, calligraphy, and painting, he was accustomed to giving himself a fanciful sobriquet as the mood took him, another refined habit of the Chinese scholar. In order to show that he hadn't forgotten the land of his birth, he specially included "of Holland" on his name card along his Chinese-style sobriquet.

When she learned we were from Taiwan, Madame van Gulik told us she had been there dozen or so years ago for treatment at Veterans' Hospital in Taipei had stayed in Taiwan for three weeks, visiting Sun Moon Lake, Wulai, and the hot springs in Peitou, but the most memorable part of her stay was the last two weeks when she studied with a teacher how to play the lute and paint pine and bamboo, "I really could have learned, you see," she said seriously. "I learned so much in just two weeks. If you add it up, it seems like the time in my life has all gone to pot."

She has begun studying painting again with a teacher in Spain, but she's learning oils. She told us that a woman from Taiwan lives on a hill near her apartment. "I really envy her," she said. Every time she compliments her on her clothes, the woman says she got them from her mother in Taiwan. "Every few months she gets a big package from her mother with clothes and shredded meat from Hsin Tung Yang [a local food company] inside!"

Shui Shih-fang left home when she was 21 and brought only one small package with her when she left Chungking to accompany R. H. van Gulik on his remarkable life. Only after a journey of ten thousand miles does one understand the meaning of home.

While working on his father's biography, her son William has always encouraged his mother to write her memoirs. But Madame van Gulik rarely mentions the past and is not very active about his suggestion. Asked why, she smiles and says: "That's passed and over with, so forget it!"

[Picture Caption]

After marrying R. H. van Gulik in 1943, Shui Shih-fang followed him faithfully on his travels as a diplomat.

"It's been so long since I last spoke Chinese!" were Madame van Gulik's first words to us when we met her.

A group portrait of Madame van Gulik and family in front of the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, which is headed by her son William.

Living in Spain for reasons of health, Madame van Gulik rarely sees her children.

Madame van Gulik and her children celebrate whenever they can get together.

"It's been so long since I last spoke Chinese!" were Madame van Gulik's first words to us when we met her.

A group portrait of Madame van Gulik and family in front of the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, which is headed by her son William.

Living in Spain for reasons of health, Madame van Gulik rarely sees her children.

Madame van Gulik and her children celebrate whenever they can get together.