Chris Elder served twice in the New Zealand Embassy in Beijing, first in the 1970s when it was still Peking, and most recently as ambassador in 1993- 97. He is the editor of New Zealand's China Experience: Its Genesis, Triumphs, and Occasional Moments of Less Than Complete Success, and Forty Years On: New Zealand- China Relations Then, Now and in the Years to Come, and two literary anthologies: Old Peking: City of the Ruler of the World and China's Treaty Ports: Half Love and Half Hate.