Pinky in Beijing: Recalling the Career of a Devoted China Hand

Editor's Note: We're celebrating tbj's ten-year anniversary all month by looking back at some of our favorite articles from the past decade. Forgotten City, which ran in the magazine from 2004-2008, was written by sinologist and history buff Ed Lanfranco, a California native who lived in Beijing from 1989-2009 and now resides back in his home state where he is researching Chinese food safety and security issues.

I have “best days” in Beijing all the time by discovering some old spot (new to me) on a map of the capital, doing research about the mystery place, and then going to check out what’s actually there. It’s difficult to describe the thrill derived when the hobby pays off and you find yourself looking at an untouched Ming fresco running across three walls of a eunuch temple in Haidian or trying to read a whitewashed Qing stele, now part of a wall in somebody’s mixed courtyard home in Xicheng. Finding these Peking pieces is an Indiana Jones or Lara Croft type of buzz … without the weaponry.

Sometimes it’s the journey rather than the destination that defines a great Beijing moment: a spring or fall day on a bike, pedaling to an obscure pagoda in Tongzhou, or walking hutongs in Dongcheng and meeting friendly urbanites.
This pastime has pitfalls however. On several occasions I’ve found areas that now only exist as a place name on an empty lot. This can be heartbreaking when a place on a recent map or atlas looks like fresh rubble and you know you’ve missed an interesting piece of the city by a few days or weeks.

A good treasure map with which to start your own explorations is Frank Dorn’s A Map and History of Peiping, first published 70 years ago. The widely available reproductions cost nine kuai for just the map (there’s supposedly an RMB 30 version floating around that comes with Dorn’s booklet). If you want one of the original prints, it’ll set you back about USD 1,000 from document dealers.

Frank “Pinky” Dorn is one of my favorite forgotten China hands of 20th century Sino-American relations. He was born in San Francisco in 1901, where he studied at the Art Institute from 1915-1918, and then went to the US Military Academy, West Point. Dorn lived in Beijing between 1934 and 1938, serving as an army attaché gathering military intelligence on imperialist Japanese aggression against China. He began his stay as a language student at the College of Chinese Studies on Chaoyangmennei Dajie. The buildings of that institution still stand, although empty and in need of restoration.

In the 1972 book Dragon by the Tail: American, British, Japanese, and Russian Encounters with China and One Another, US diplomat John Paton Davies Jr. said: “At the age of thirty-four Dorn was still known by his cadet nickname of Pinky. He looked like a big, blushing choirboy, a military handicap which he manfully overcame by being pithy and smarter than most of his contemporaries. Certainly he was more versatile than anyone I knew in Peking – author of a novel published in Britain, compiler during his duty in the Philippines of a pygmy Negrito-English dictionary, maker of illustrated maps, an expert chef, and already during his first year in Peking a discriminating collector of Chinese antiquities.”

Dorn’s multiple talents led him to become the closest aide to General Joseph Stilwell in the China-Burma-India theater of war when America entered WWII. He earned numerous citations and decorations, including two from a Kuomintang government grateful for his defense of China.

Pinky retired from the army as a brigadier general in 1953 after a distinguished 30-year career. After putting down the sword, he picked up the pen and cleaver, writing both novels and cookbooks. He was also an accomplished painter, and had one-man exhibitions in Paris, Washington DC, Mexico City and Madrid.

During his last 11 years before dying of cancer in July 1981, Dorn churned out eight more books, starting with The Forbidden City: The Biography of a Palace, published in 1970. In its preface, the man nicknamed Pinky described one of the joys of being a China hand:

“I developed an interest in the Forbidden City and other imperial residences, first from casual sightseeing and then from conducting important visitors and tourists through the palaces. A growing familiarity with the buildings and courts soon became an absorbing urge to learn more about the history and legends connected with those who had created and lived within the walls of the palace-city. The first result of my researches was a pictorial map of Peking, after which I was completely hooked on the whole fascinating subject.” 
Ed Lanfranco