Host: Would you please tell us your experience as one of the first students learning Farsi in New China? In June 1966, you interpreted for Premier Zhou Enlai and you also worked as an interpreter for Liu Shaoqi, Chen Yi and Deng Xiaoping. Would you please share this experience with us?

Ambassador Hua: As a student, we had few choices but followed the government’s arrangements. I was recommended for admission into the Beijing Foreign Institute in 1956, when the PRC was founded not too long ago and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs only had interpreters/translators in English, French and Russian. In line with Premier Zhou’s guidance, thirty students majoring in English from a dozen universities and colleges all over China were selected to be Asian-African Language majors; I was one of them. To be honest, when I was told to learn Farsi, I did not know in which countries Farsi was used. I am one of the first seven students who learned Farsi. It is a difficult language for us Chinese to learn. After graduation, I entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which later sent me to Afghanistan since half of the population there speak Farsi.. After I came back, I went into cadre school.

One day in 1972, I was doing farm work at cadre school, when the military representative of the school asked me to hurry back to Beijing for a certain task. Before this, I thought I would stay in the school all through my life, without dealing with foreign affairs anymore. The second day, I was carried by a big truck to Taiyuan, and then I took a train to Beijing. Upon my arrival in Beijing, I found myself, while wearing clothes covered with mud, being told I was to interpret for the Queen and Premier of Iran who were there to pay a visit. So I borrowed a set of clothes from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and went to the Great Hall of the People to interpret for Premier Zhou. This was the first formal occasion where I acted as an interpreter for him. From then on, I was the interpreter for Premier Zhou every time Iranian guests came.