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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2009
When, in the spring of 1949, the Chinese Communist troops captured Nanking in an impetuous surprise advance, there was a Peace Congress in session at Prague. The news of the fall of Nanking was greeted with a raging thunderstorm of claps and rhythmic applause. There followed an outbreak of promiscuous hugging all over the place. The Chinese delegates were carried on fervent shoulders all round the conference room. A Hungarian poet who attended the Congress as a member of the Hungarian delegation withdrew to a sound-proof distance from the jubilant crowd, only to return delivered of a poem written in honour of the Chinese People's Army. The fruit of his labours, entitled “Glad Tidings from Nanking,” was translated that very day into Russian, and later into Chinese. The era of the Grand Victory celebrations had begun.