How did you come to start China Books and Periodicals?
Noyes: Well, I have always been interested in China because I was born there. But I have done a great many things in my life. I taught at a university and wanted to write. Then I went to work as a machinist for about 10 years. At that point, I got fired because I was too good a union leader. So I went into the book business, and I worked for a book man in Chicago—an old time progressive, Paul Romaine.
Paul Romaine told me the Russian magazines were great, but the Chinese were really beautiful. Then one day he told me that the woman importing these items in New York, Margaret Cowl, of Imported Publications and Products, was looking for somebody to take over. That was back in 1959.
I was deeply devoted to China and the Chinese people. In a period of post-McCarthysim, the country was still deep in the whole stench of inhibitions of that period—the persecutions and loyalty oaths. This resulted in a desire on my part to say: "Well, look, the Russians are dumping the Chinese. Nobody is speaking for them. They're not in the United Nations, and they're not recognized by this country. But there's Edgar Snow, who wrote that great book on China, and other people, going back and forth and saying things are thriving in China."
So we started off and my wife, like most of my friends, said she'd make a try with me. But many said, "Sell books from China? You'll never make a go of it."
What did it take to actually get China Books set up?
Noyes: Well, the licensing thing took a long time. But what was disastrous was that the government asked us to deposit 50 percent of the sales price in a blocked account. Where they got that formula, I'm not quite sure. Imagine the differences if we put a price on a book of $1 and we sell it to a customer for a $1 and to a bookstore for 60 cents and to a library for 80 cents and to a distributor for 50 cents. You can imagine having to trace each item that you sold. It took me three days to make the first report and our sales totaled $200.
Margaret Cowl had advised me never to go near the government because she had very bad results. But I went to New York to the Foreign Assets Control Department of the US Treasury, down on Wall Street. I had an appointment with the head of Foreign Assets Control—a very dapper kind of Manhattan-style person. He wore spats and was very much the officious government official.
Well, I asked him a question or two and suddenly it dawned on him that I had been a professor of English, and he was giving talks around Manhattan. He wanted to know all about the semantics of the English language and how you keep people awake and things like that.
So what we did was sit there for half an hour and talk about how to make a speech. At the end of it a Mrs. Schwartz of Treasury called him up and they talked about fried chicken recipes. Then he came back and said, "Now what was that you wanted?"
I said that my license was much too complicated, and he said, "Well, write me a letter and I'll see that you get what you want. And by the way, books don't pay." He went to his cabinet and took out three cards recommending furniture companies in England, saying, "You'll do far better with furniture. These have been imported before the embargo, so you don't need to worry about it."
What was the first shipment?
Noyes: There were two tons of books—about 5000. The first shipment was difficult because neither the Post Office nor the Customs Department knew how to deal with it.
We were very poor at the time. We couldn't even buy a typewriter. What I bumped into right away was the bureaucracy in the Customs building, because they had all their particular brokerages and they wanted me to pay them a couple or three hundred dollars. I was determined to get the shipment through and I was there three whole days.
There were ten floors to the Customs building and I was shunted back and forth and up until I was just about crazy. Finally, they must have thought this guy is going to pester the life out of us. At the end of the third day, they said if I would get a special invoice form filled out in China—OK. I didn't think it would work, since there wasn't diplomatic recognition between our two countries.
Anyway, I went out and they cleared the shipment. I took it to our bungalow and set it up in pear boxes. Two months later the ax fell. Guoi Shudian wrote to us and said, sorry, but due to circumstances which you understand we are not able to fill out official US document forms.
So we just sort of played quiet for a while until the US Customs sent us a notice telling us we were fined $1200 for failing to conform to regulations. That would be like $100,000 to us at the present time. It was like bankruptcy straight ahead.
I went in to our lawyer almost weeping. He called up the head of Customs, who reduced the fine from $1200 to $12. The lawyer thought this was great and turned to me and said, "Agreed?"
I said, "No! Don't give them a cent!"
He put his had over the receiver but said, "Yeah, my client agrees," and slammed it down.
Who were your early clientele?
Noyes: Margaret Cowl had developed relationships with the radical bookstores across the country. We moved out to San Francisco from Chicago in 1963 and we began to travel and take samples around to hundreds of bookstores every year. That's really what built the business.
We had an awful lot of support in those days because people were angry at McCarthy and the loyalty oaths. There was this wave against that type of thing: for example, the head of the Midwest section of the Association of Asian Studies invited us to set up an exhibit in St. Louis. He came up to the table in the middle of the proceedings there and asked if we were having trouble getting the books. We said, "Not anymore," and he replied, "Well, if you do let us know and we will go to bat for you."
China Books certainly played a role in building friendship. Can you comment on this?
Noyes: In some ways we were the original friendship association in this country. We would have volunteers come in looking for something to do. They would sit on the floor and look at the books and the records when we finally got them in and the posters—they would paper their rooms with them.
In 1947, when the national association [USCPFA] was founded in Los Angeles, Frank Pestana called me three days ahead and said, "We would like to have a major exhibition of the books and periodicals. Han Suyin is giving a talk in Beverly Hills. Will you bring down some of you more expensive books for that?
I worked night and day myself because everyone here was so tied up at the time. I got all this together in a station wagon and went down so heavily loaded that my tired were almost flat. I got lots of help from the people there. The friendship people would come up and say, "How can I help–" It was so uncommercial. We were very happy to be a part of it.