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The PLAIN TRUTH
a Magazine of Understanding
BOX 111, Pasadena, Calif. 91109
HERBERT W. ARMSTRONG, Editor
June 2, 1966
Dear Friend and PLAIN TRUTH Subscriber:
Mrs. Armstrong and I have just returned from a trip around the
world, sick at heart--and yet, OVERJOYED! And that is not a
contradiction.
I want to explain why.
For this vitally affects you and your immediate future.
But first, before I explain, let me say, as our older
subscribers know, it has become tradition, twice a year, for me to
offer something VERY SPECIAL, very fine, and very new (absolutely
free, of course) as a gift of love and appreciation for your
interest, to all our big growing family of readers of The PLAIN
TRUTH.
We have come up with something I feel you'll REALLY WANT AND
PRIZE. I'm sure you know there is no charge--we have nothing
whatever to sell--we only want to GIVE. I know that sounds
incredible to new subscribers--but it's true.
But uppermost on my mind right now is the eye-opening
CONDITION Mrs. Armstrong and I saw on this trip around the world.
There are some things you hear and read about, but can never really
understand until you are there--until you experience them. For the
first time we were in China--Hong Kong, that is. Americans are not
allowed to travel in Red China. Hong Kong is as much CHINA as
Shanghai or Foochow, but politically it is a British colony. 99%
of its population is Chinese. It is an area of extreme contrasts.
The modern downtown business section looks almost like Fifth
Avenue, New York. There is block after block of modern gleaming
skyscrapers; streets lined with fashionable shop windows. Yet the
giant neon signs, with their exotic Chinese letters, remind one
forcibly that this is CHINA. The fashionable stores, shops, and
the office buildings are operated by Chinese and, apparently only
the tourists in this world-shopping center are Occidentals.
But we wanted to see how the vast majority of Chinese live.
Those in the office buildings, the luxury hotels, and the smart
shops are well-dressed, educated, modern, westernized-appearing
people. But they are the very small minority. So we hired a car
and driver, and saw pretty much of Hong Kong Island, as well as the
peninsula mainland.
We saw native Chinese living natively as the Chinese masses
have for centuries. We saw degenerated wretchedness, squalor,
filth, ignorance and poverty beyond description. Words can't fill