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It all began in Russia.
The St. Petersburg Hotel dominates the waterfront opposite the mooring place
of the battleship Aurora that fired the famous cannon shot during the
Russian Revolution. It reeks of the atmosphere of the old Soviet regime.
Matronly minders on every dimly lit floor, waiting to be “sweetened” to
allow a vodka and champagne party to occur, public rooms that never seemed
to be used, restaurants that either didn’t serve anything or presented a
menu that was essentially a diktat. And much of the hotel was, probably
still is, a building site: a memorial to lost dreams as the Soviet Union
collapsed just a few years before. Yes, there were also the elegantly
furnished apartments that must have been the preserve of the high party
officials in the old days. The Presidents of IUPS (Masao Ito as outgoing
President and Ewald Weibel as incoming President) and I as the Secretary
were allocated these oddly magnificent suites and we had marvellous views of
the White Nights as the sun hardly seemed to set all night.
This was 1997, and the occasion was the IUPS International Congress in
Russia. We did drink a fair amount of Soviet Champagne (if you knew enough
Russian to know where to buy it from it was incredibly cheap), but our
spirits were not exactly high. As the chief officers of IUPS we already knew
that the organization was facing a major crisis, though we didn’t yet know
how really serious this was going to be financially. The truth came out
later. The loss was more than the organisation could bear. And the
professional congress organizers hadn’t even paid the speakers their
expenses! Into this terrible situation walked Shu Chien, just elected as the
new Treasurer of IUPS, and later to become the Chairman of the San Diego
Congress.
The old and new Executive first met each other over a simple dinner in the
only subterranean restaurant that worked. So, there on the other side of the
table I met this beaming Chinese-American who smiled and exuded the kind of
enthusiasm that we had almost had beaten out of us. We set to work
immediately thinking about how to run a lower-cost but innovative and
successful Congress. This had a double significance since Shu was to look
after IUPS finances for the next turbulent four years, and the American
delegates to the IUPS Assembly had just, narrowly, won the vote to host the
Congress in 2005. This bid was for Washington, a fact of great significance
in this story. He and I and our fellow officers in IUPS were clearly going
to sink or swim together during the years that followed, so we needed to get
to know our shipmates well.
First, we mounted the salvage operation on St. Petersburg, a task in which
Ewald Weibel, as President of IUPS, took a commanding and powerful lead with
Shu and me as the support troops. Somehow the money was raised to reimburse
every speaker at the Russian Congress who still needed expenses paid. I
should explain here that the Russian Congress itself was enjoyable and it
was a privilege to get to know the great city of St. Petersburg, its people
and its fabulous art treasures. Our Russian colleagues also fought against
great odds in organizing the Congress. The problem was money, not science or
culture. Russia, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, was financially
on its knees, its famed Academy of Sciences could not honour the financial
guarantees given eight years before in Helsinki.
Next we met together in the city of Christchurch to see what the New Zealand
organizers were planning for the 2001 Congress. Unfairly, I think, they had
to take much of the brunt of our retrospective concerns about 1997. But they
also impressed us with their innovation and endless enthusiasm. Shu, of
course, had the responsibility to give their budget a critical eye and to
ensure that IUPS did not face another financial crisis of a level that
would, quite simply, have been the end of the organization. We faced the
prospect of bankruptcy.
That long trip in 1998 to the South Island of New Zealand was an important
one, not only for the planning of the Congress there, but also for the
coalescing of the relationships within IUPS Executive that were going to
prove of vital importance three years later in the run up to the 2001
Assembly, and the need to confirm the American bid for 2005. Shu came with
his charming wife K.C., and I remember getting the guitar out one evening to
raise our spirits with some multi-lingual serenading that she greatly
enjoyed. The guitar returns at the end of my story.
In the event, the 2001 Congress was a great success (see the IUPS Newsletter
on the website http://www.iups.org),
though it did make a modest financial loss. But we never expected it to be
the financial saviour of IUPS. What was crucial to the reputation of IUPS
was that it should be shown that it could still hold such a Congress and
make it a scientific success. On this, our New Zealand colleagues did a
magnificent job. With the prospect of an American-hosted Congress to follow,
we were surely out of the wood.
Or were we?
I shall never forget a telephone call I received from Shu Chien at my home
in Oxford just as I was to leave for a family holiday in France before going
on to the Christchurch Congress. What he told me was the equivalent of
another bombshell: the American delegates were going to propose that we
abandon the Washington proposal (which in any case had been won by only a
narrow margin) and, apparently, fuse the IUPS Congress with the annual FASEB
meeting in San Diego. Readers of this article need to know that the papers
for the 2001 Assembly had already been circulated! A fundamental change at
this late stage was unprecedented. The Assembly could conceivably reject the
American confirmation, even leave IUPS with no Congress at all. Shu and I
discussed the matter in the brief time we had available and we ended up
agreeing that this was going to be a tough ride. The rest of the world was
going to be highly suspicious of the Americans’ motives, and even think
that, this time, the death knell of IUPS really had been rung.
While in a remote part of South West France I tried to remain in touch via a
primitive internet facility at the library of the local market town as
emails, steadily getting more and more explosive and urgent, flew across the
ocean. I remember a telephone call with the President that left us both
feeling even more depressed than before. It looked as though we had jumped
out of the hot frying pan of Russia only to land in the even hotter fire of
the USA!
Yet—-and here is where I come back to the bonding session in Christchurch
three years earlier—-I also knew that something I could be certain of was
that Shu’s motives and, I imagined, those of the whole American delegation
to the Assembly, were very well intentioned. As I reflected over an email
note that I drafted wearing my legal role as Secretary, I decided to include
this carefully chosen phrase as well as doing what I had to do: to lay out
the procedural and legal difficulties.
I believe that phrase was crucial in the events that followed. As soon as we
arrived in Christchurch, Shu and I met at breakfast for a “cards on the
table” and totally non-committal chat. This meeting confirmed my judgment.
“Well-intentioned” was precisely the right description, and Shu had not only
marshaled the arguments to deal with my own doubts, he had taken fully on
board the discussion we had before my holiday: that the Americans were going
to have a particularly tough time, so deep was the suspicion that this
amounted to an American take-over. The situation was complicated even
further by the news that the US National Committee had appointed Shu Chien
to be the 2005 Congress Chairman! He was no longer a neutral IUPS officer.
He had also to be the chief advocate for the new proposal.
Those few days as the Executive and Council met before the Assembly vote
were the scenes of intense negotiations as the conditions for a San Diego
Congress were hammered out. It is in such situations that friendships either
deepen or wither. What came across to me from Shu and his American
colleagues, particularly Virginia Huxley who had to make the presentation to
the Assembly, was total enthusiasm and commitment. What eventually emerged
was a very exciting proposal and one which I felt sure would succeed.
Returning home from New Zealand, I looked forward to San Diego 2005 with
great expectations. It could be the largest Congress since Glasgow 1993, and
it could re-connect physiology with the other physiological sciences. And it
was. It achieved both of these aims. It was brilliant.
My first sense of confidence was at the dinner given by Shu Chien for the
Council and organisers just before the Congress began. It was held in his
lovely home, full of magnificent Chinese calligraphy. The atmosphere was one
of excitement and anticipation. Towards the end of the dinner, and while I
was reflecting on the contrast with that other dinner, way back in the
depths of the St. Petersburg Hotel, Shu’s wife K.C. suddenly appeared with a
guitar! Appropriately, we celebrated with the very same troubadour song with
which I serenaded her back in New Zealand: a lovely touch connecting the
confident present to the uncertain past.
As I arrived at the Congress itself, following two successful and exciting
satellites near San Diego, I could immediately sense that we were on the
verge of triumph. As one of the UK delegates expressed it later, any fear
that EB was going to take over IUPS was misplaced. If anything, IUPS took
over EB. As soon as I returned to the UK I sent congratulatory emails to Shu,
to Marty Frank and others involved in the organisation and planning.
But what a craggy journey to have to make to get there!
Inspired by Shu’s collection of Chinese calligraphy, I am reminded of that
great poem by the greatest of Chinese poets, (Li Po), when he sailed down to
Chiang-Ling after being released from prison:
“Po-ti I left at dawn in the morning glow of the clouds; the thousand li to
Chiang-Ling we sailed in a single day. On either shore the gibbons’ chatter
sounded without pause while my light boat skimmed past a thousand sombre
crags”.) (Innes Herdan, 1973).
Three years before the Congress I had written to Shu: “I was Chairman of the
1993 Congress in the UK. So as one Congress chairman to another, ‘good luck,
Shu!’– I hope that 2005 will be the great event you and we all want it to
be. Li Po sailed the thousand leagues down to Chiang Ling in a single day.
Your journey will be even longer—four years. Don’t listen too much to the
ceaseless chatter of the gibbons on the river banks. Enjoy the morning-glow
of the clouds, but bring the fragile boat of IUPS to its safe haven.”
With the team of American and International Committees, IUPS did indeed
arrive at a safe haven in San Diego. It can look forward to Kyoto in 2009 in
a confident mood. It needs to. The challenges that physiology faces as it
tries to interpret the wealth of genomic and proteomic data we now have is
immense, but also exciting.
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| Chinese calligraphy of Li
Po's poem. |
Dinner party at Shu
Chien’s home, surrounded by beautiful Chinese calligraphy. |
Reference
Herdan, Innes. 300 T’ang Poets. Taipei: Far East Book Club Ltd. 1973.
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