Initially an English student, Che Hongcai was sent to study Pashto, a language used in Afghanistan, by the Chinese government. He was sent to the University of Kabul during the great Chinese famine in 1958 to 1962. He was given the mission to create the first Pashto-Chinese dictionary, which took him 36 years. Strangely, the dictionary mission was all but forgotten, and Che went from university professor to employee of China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television to envoy in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He thrived under every tribulation that comes with such delicate work in such a troubled region. After decades of danger and hard work, the Pashto-Chinese dictionary is finally set to be published later this year.

Q: You enrolled as an English major at Beijing Foreign Studies University in 1957. How did you end up going to Afghanistan to study Pashto?

A: One day, after having been enrolled for three years, the Party branch of the English department informed me that it was looking for students to study uncommon foreign languages, and I had been selected to study overseas. The Ministry of Higher Education held a two-month training session for about 100 students from foreign language departments all over the country who were going to be sent to other countries, mainly Asian countries. The training was largely ideological education (), such as the significance of studying uncommon languages and diplomatic principles. We had no idea which language we were going to learn. It was upon registration that five of us found out that we were to go to Afghanistan. What language was spoken in Afghanistan? We did not know, nor did we know anything about the country.

Q: What was it like to study in Afghanistan in the late 1950s?  

A: We went to university for classes and lived in the embassy rather than on campus. Afghanistan was still wary of China, a new socialist country, so it was afraid our ideas would influence its students. The embassy also preferred to accommodate us. In the beginning we didn't even know the alphabet. No Chinese had ever learned Pashto before. So we learned the language in English from a teacher the university hired especially for us. There were only three of us and an older Japanese in the class. The teacher didn't know how to teach us at first. He wrote across the blackboard, but none of us could understand. So we asked whether the language had an alphabet. We guided the teacher in how to teach us based on our previous language learning experiences. After eight months we could also choose the regular courses offered by the literary department of Kabul University. For three years, from the end of 1959 to 1963, we had no summer or winter holidays. We ate and lived in the embassy, and our rules were strict. When we went out, we had to leave in groups of at least two. Afghanistan was under monarchical rule and relatively peaceful at the time. Our lives were peaceful, too, centered on studying and traveling between the embassy and school. Sometimes we invited Afghan students over to play volleyball. Looking back, it was monotonous for a young person. In the embassy, life wasn't that much different from in China. Of course in China at the time, the period coincided with the famine and the deterioration of the China-Soviet relationship. We had no knowledge of it, nor did it affect us. It was kept secret from us by the embassy. We even went to visit Soviet students in the Soviet embassy thinking we were still friendly with the Soviet Union. Once they gave each of us a copy of the works of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. After we went back, we were criticized. "Why did you even accept it?" Well, how were we supposed to know?

Q: What happened after you came back?  

A: When the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) began, all study halted. Students were sent to the army in Tangshan to labor, and so was I, in 1968. I did farm work and attended military drills every day. They were extremely hard times.

Q: How did you start the work on the dictionary?

A: In 1975, the State Council planned on publishing 160 dictionaries. The Commercial Press was commissioned to publish the Pashto-Chinese dictionary. Commercial Press turned to China Radio International for help. We desperately needed a dictionary, so we accepted the mission. I went back to the Beijing Broadcasting Institute since it provided the appropriate environment for compiling a dictionary. We worked on it until 1982, when the department asked me to research the possibility of creating an international journalism major. By that time, we had made 10,000 vocabulary cards that filled more than 30 filing cabinets, yet our work had to stop. I was assigned to the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television to build a correspondence course.

Q: What was it like to be an envoy in Pakistan and Afghanistan?

A: It was intense. My three years there happened to be after 1979, when a lot of Chinese leaders such as Li Peng, Wan Li and Song Ping visited Pakistan one after another. Every time someone came, we had to compile a report with facts, analyses and proposals for them to discuss with Pakistan's leaders. Each time, we were locked in a confidential room to work - an anti-bugging and anti-photography room. On leaving the room, not a word of it could be spoken. When I was in Afghanistan, the civil war reached its height. Weapons were aimed at the office of the president, and since our embassy was next to it, we were seriously affected. The embassy was hit by 13 mortar rounds and would have been leveled if it weren't for five tall pine trees that sheltered it. I arrived in 1992, and by the end of 1993 the war was already a mess. The embassy began to pull out. Some of us moved to Pakistan to see what would happen. Then, after the decision for a full pullout came, I went back to Afghanistan one last time and left some money with a dependable local Afghan to take care of the embassy.

Q: Did you feel you had been forgotten?

A: (Laughs) Yes. It was only after I was interviewed that people remembered me. No one knew my previous experience, and no one remembered me. But you can't say the country forgot. China has changed so much. Who would remember that a single dictionary was supposed to be published?

Q: Some say the pay of 80 yuan for every 1,000 words is too low.

A: (Laughs) Honestly, I never thought about the pay. We wanted to leave something for future Chinese, a work that can be passed on. If we just did it for the money, we would have given up long ago.

Courtesy of the World of Chinese