Vale Jingcha - Obituary for a Dear Friend

On 14 September my dear friend Professor Frederic Wakeman Jr passed away from cancer.  Although we had not corresponded for a couple of years he will be deeply missed.  I knew Fred from his work on the Shanghai Municipal Police and he was a referee for my sojourn to Harvard in 2002.  Fred was from the ‘Ernest Hemingway School of Hairy Chested Writing.’  An accomplished martial artist, he had a habit of turning up in unusual places throughout his life.  He was involved in underground martial arts competitions in Taiwan and the odd pub brawl in London. As for his career prior to his becoming an academic, his book on Dai Li, the Chinese Spymaster was written with a working knowledge on this type of work.  His back injury was initially caused when he carried a back pack around the jungles of a South East nation in 1960. Fred ended up in a wheelchair from surgery to reduce his pain which left him with a gammy left leg.  He told me not to have surgery on my back and that is the reason I have not done it to this day.

All I can say is raise a glass in his honour- Vale Jingcha.

Contributed by Martin Andrew on October 6, 2006 at 06:39 AM in Books, Martin Andrew | Permalink

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