Star-Bulletin writer Arlene Lum has received permission to enter China. She will leave Hong Kong for Canton tomorrow morning and spend about one month traveling and reporting from the largest nation in the world.
Miss Lum has been in Hong Kong for several weeks, participating in a Chinese studies program conducted by the University of Hawaii. A specialist in education coverage for the Star-Bulletin, she will report on schools, culture and the daily life of the Chinese people.
Her dispatches are to begin appearing in the Star-Bulletin next week.
Hobert E. Duncan, executive editor of the Star-Bulletin, said that permission for Miss Lum to enter China represents the special place that Hawaii occupies in people-
to-people relations between China and the United States.
“The Star-Bulletin believes strongly that the free flow of information between people of differing ideologies and outlook contributed immeasurably to increased understanding and harmony in the world,” Duncan said.
“Governments and diplomats must necessarily bargain and negotiate in an atmosphere of power and economic politics. But if the peoples of their countries are provided with factual information through such reporters as Miss Lum, the effort toward understanding and peace will be hastened.
“In this context, the Star-Bulletin is immensely pleased that a writer of Miss Lum’s caliber and competence will be able to provide our readers with information about the world’s most under-
reported people.” …
(Miss Lum) is believed to be the first Chinese-
American journalist (and) … among very few American journalists to be permitted to enter China since 1948. Others are John Roderick of the Associated Press and James Reston of the New York Times.
A native of Honolulu, Miss Lum, 29, worked as a reporter for Seventeen Magazine in New York, traveling extensively throughout the Mainland before joining the Star-
Bulletin four years ago. …
The daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Koon Chew Lum, … Miss Lum attending Roosevelt High School, went to the University of Hawaii for several years and then to Boston University, where she earned a degree in journalism.
Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar.
