When Frederick Gruin arrived in Nanking last fall to become TIME'S first resident postwar correspondent there, he had to assume his share of the disorganization that eight years of Japanese occupation had inflicted upon China's capital. His efforts to establish himself, his wife, and their young son (partly detailed in his letter below) are typical of the difficulties in covering the news over much of the Far East today:

"Only the wealthy, the lucky, or foreign officialdom have a chance to find a place to sleep in Nanking. By a stroke of luck and persistence in following up a Shanghai newspaper ad, we discovered the little house which is our domicile and TIME-LIFE'S Nanking office. I cannot even begin to convey the amount of personal effort and frustration we put into the housing quest. As an old China hand puts it: "If you hear of a house in Nanking, you don't ask to see it; you take it on the spot sight unseen and then you look over what you've got."

"The address of our office-residence is #3 Shih Tze-kai (Crossroad). It is a six-room greybrick bungalow, with an attic, garage and shanty-like servants' quarters. It has bamboo-fenced grounds, which were given over to neighborhood pigs, fowl and scabby babies. It had been occupied by the Japanese for eight years, and neglected for eight years. Consequently, it was in an absolutely revolting state of disrepair: no furniture, tat ami (raised floors) everywhere, brokendown plumbing and lighting, filth, filth and more filth.

"But it had once been a home. By the application of imagination, exhausting effort and money, we got together a native repair crew who did a job of painting and renovation which still is far from U.S. standards. By haunting the Government, we seem likely to get a phone (in Shanghai, we hear, a civilian must spend $3,000 U.S. to have one installed where one hasn't been before). By doggedness, we dug up a second-hand bathtub and seat toilet ($750 U.S.; new equipment would have cost $2,000). By ruthless shopping we found several midget stoves (coal has jumped from $60 to $110 U.S. a ton; and at that it's partly dust and clay), which will be our sole source of heat this winter. The Japs made scrap of most of China's radiators and Nanking electric power is so rationed that electric heaters we brought with us from the States are useless. I might add, incidentally, that there is no cooking gas here; all food is prepared over wood or coal-dust-cake fires. Our lease is for one year. The rent is $500 a month.

"Number 3 Shih Tze-kai will be an office as well as a home in one of the world's important capitals. TIME-LIFE could never cover Chinese politics adequately from Shanghai. Nor is commuting between Shanghai and Nanking practical. Regular riding in casual Chinese planes sooner or later would be fatal; the best train takes seven to eight hours one way; the auto highway is still impassable because of broken bridges and potholes.

"We got our Ford up here by flatcar from Shanghai. This was another costly but really indispensable operation. This capital spreads time-consumingly. Without a car you can only use your legs, ricksha, donkey-cart, pedicab, bicycle or jampacked truck-bus. For a five-minute interview you might ricksha for an hour. Even with a car, for example, it is 30 minutes or so driving from the press hostel to the radiogram office to file a cable, etc. Meanwhile, it's an unforgettable experience."

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