Till 1950, Father Destier had been happy in China except for dysentery. ‘The communists came, but they left me alone. The villagers gave a good report of me, and I went on for a few months.’ In his voice sounded a naive and wistful pride.

‘Then there was the Korean war, and suddenly there was suspicion in every eye. I went on, but after three months, very politely, they asked me to leave, gave me my ticket, put me on the train. My neighbour, the next priest, who lived thirty-four kilometres away (we visited each other once every two months – it was a three-day expedition every time in a sedan chair, up ten hills and fording three rivers), was not so lucky. He was accused of spying and sent to prison and worried himself so much that when he came out they had to send him back to France for good.

‘But I was fit, and I came here, to Todak, when they were resettling it, and already at the beginning there was this trouble about the swamp, and the Resettlement Officer …

‘How undramatic, trivial it all was … and so hot too, and you know what heat does to you … makes you not notice, makes you forget … they were still putting up the wire fences, round the high ground. Some lorries had come in filled with people to be resettled, and armoured cars, and everywhere policemen with guns levelled against everyone round them, and soldiers. Then the people came out of the lorries and stood in groups, there on the central square where they are being assembled today, and the Resettlement Officer, now no more among us (God forgive me for not feeling more sorry), shouting at them, waving his arm and his stick: ‘Come on, get cracking over there …’ and the quiet hard hatred seeped out of them thick, thick … I could smell the hate hitting us full in the face, great waves of it out of the docile people lining up in the square. I said to him (his name was Uxbridge): ‘Is there anything I can do to help? I speak Hakka as well as French.’ Of course my English is not good.

‘There was an interpreter with him, a Chinese boy that I do not like, servile, servile … and they were telling him to tell the white man that the land was too low, it was swamp, it would flood, they could not grow anything upon it … they could not build in the swamp, and there were palm trunks still sticking out … and the land was wet … ‘Tell those bastards to put up their huts, the roofs are there, and if they don’t start quick they’ll go to detention camp.’ All he said to me was: ‘Why don’t you carry a gun? You ought to get a gun, these brutes are bad, treacherous bastards. They’ve been passing food for months.’