Let's Sell These People a Piece of Blue Sky: Hubbard, Dianetics and Scientology by Jon Atack Page B

the Henderson sailed. Meanwhile, Ron’s trunk had
been lost en route. He did not recover it for a year, but in spite of this,
Hubbard thoroughly enjoyed the voyage.
    There are two accounts of this trip in the same notebook.
They are within a few pages of one another, yet they differ in detail. Ron was
already making a habit of elaborating his past. Further, the accounts teach us
to question the veracity of any Hubbard claim. The Henderson’s passenger
list shows that rather than having been allowed aboard only an hour before, Ron
was aboard fully twenty-four hours before she sailed. 21
    On Guam, the 17-year-old Ron was tutored by his mother, a
qualified teacher, for what should have been his 12th or senior high school
grade. He was being prepared for the Naval Academy examination. 22
    During this period, Ron made his second trip to China, with
his parents. China was still in the throes of civil war, and travel there was
limited. Hubbard kept a diary of his trip aboard the USS Gold Star . The
ship docked at Tsingtao on October 24th, 1928, and stayed there for six days
before putting to sea for Taku. The Hubbards then travelled inland to Peking,
where they spent about a week. 23
    In his diary, Hubbard gave a fairly elaborate description of
the sights, probably seen on tours given by the Peking YMCA. He was unimpressed
by the marvels of Chinese architecture, and the only building which won his
vote was the Rockefeller Foundation. Even the Great Wall failed to elicit more
than a comment about its possible use as a roller coaster. Two years later, in
another notebook entry, hindsight had transformed the visit to the Great Wall
into a far more romantic experience, but that was Hubbard’s way. Hubbard’s
opinion of the Chinese was consistently low. Among other criticisms, he said
the Chinese were both stupid and vicious and would always take the long way
round.
    While in Peking, Hubbard visited a Buddhist temple. He was
later to say that Scientology was the western successor to Buddhism, yet his
only comment at the time was that the devotees sounded like frogs croaking.
    After Peking came Chefoo and then Shanghai. Ron made little
comment about Shanghai. It was cold, and the native part of the city had only
been re-opened to foreigners two weeks earlier. Then came Hong Kong, again with
little comment, and by December 15th, the Chinese adventure was over and the
Gold Star was back at sea.
    The deep understanding of Eastern philosophy acquired by
Hubbard in China was boiled down into a single statement in one of his diaries.
He said that “the only trouble with China is that there are too many chinks
there.” 26 Inscrutable, but hardly a compendium of the great thoughts
of the Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian masters.
    Hubbard was 17 and this was his last visit to China. In his
diary, he made no mention of any meeting in Peking with “old Mayo, last of a
line of magicians of Kublai Khan,” mentioned in one of his Scientology books. 27 David Mayo would turn up far later in Hubbard’s life, as one of the rebels who
split Scientology apart in the 1980s. But he is a New Zealander and makes no
claims of ties to Kublai Khan.
    There is no record of Hubbard’s supposed travels in Tibet, 28 the “Western hills of China” or India. 29 A flight change at Calcutta
airport in 1959 30 seems to have been his only direct contact with
the land of Vedantic philosophy. Indeed in one of his early Dianetic lectures
he dismissed his teenage journeys, saying “I was in the Orient when I was
young. Of course, I was a harum-scarum kid. I wasn’t thinking about deep philosophical
problems.” 31
    By Christmas 1928, Hubbard was back on Guam. He took the
Naval Academy entrance examination failing the mathematics section. 32 In August 1929, Harry Hubbard and his family returned to the US. 33 Harry was posted to Washington, DC and Ron enrolled at the Swavely Prep School,
in Manassas, Virginia, for intensive study to prepare him for the Naval
Academy. 34