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Seventeen years on the streets, living and working with the people of China, Jeff
For donations, print books, ebooks and audiobooks, please see at the bottom of this post
Above: Chinese funeral wreaths, made out of brightly colored paper flowers. The Chinese in the middle says 奠 = diàn. It means to make offerings to spirits of the afterlife. After two to three days of mourning, they are burned, so that the smoke goes to heaven. Live on, Godfree, live on!
In his honor: Godfree was born in 1940, Year of the Dragon. I’m pretty sure I took this photo in 2024 in a sculptor’s workshop.
Note: several China Writer members wrote lovely tributes to Godfree. In another post, I will collect them, add this one and create a CWG encomium to the wise man.
Godfree Roberts and I met each other by email in 2013-14 when the first book of The China Trilogy came out, 44 Days Backpacking in China. We started to develop a dialogue and kept in touch. I could tell that he was really a sponge for all things China, as I was, so it proved to be a fruitful and meaningful friendship.
He regaled me about his six months in China, in 1976, at the end of the Cultural Revolution, where he spent time in Beijing and Shanghai. Very few non-Chinese had this opportunity. He said from that point on, he was hooked on China. That made two of us.
When we met, he had a relocation business in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and had already written three or four books about how to move to Thailand, specifically Chiang Mai. He even wrote a book about dengue fever, which can afflict Thailand. I just checked on Amazon and those older books are no longer available. The only one that’s available is his masterpiece on China,
Why China Leads the World: Talent at the Top, Data in the Middle, Democracy at the Bottom
https://www.amazon.com/Why-China-Leads-World-Democracy-ebook/dp/B08Q9PN8SV/
Over the years, Godfree and I continued to stay in frequent touch. He read the other two books of The China Trilogy, China Rising and The BIG Red Book on China. When my wife and I moved to Chiang Mai in 2019, I was very proud to present him with autographed copies of The China Trilogy, which he really appreciated.
From the start, I could tell back then that Godfree was looking for a way to promote his vision of China and he was pumping me with a lot of questions about publishing books, creating a website, marketing, etc.
He was a meticulous researcher, very methodical, loved to thrash out ideas and was in no hurry. His China book didn’t get published until 2020 and was updated in 2023. Back then, when he finally got a draft of Why China Leads the World, he sent me an advanced copy and asked me to read and critique it, which I was very happy to do.
He also was trying to find a publisher and even hired an agent. It’s the dream of every writer. Of course, it would never be published by anybody, because of its pro-China stance. I finally convinced him to go to Amazon and self publish, which he did.
But that was just the beginning of Godfree’s China publishing story. He had in his mind an idea to create a platform with up-to-date news about China’s progress, development, tech, innovation, politics, society, etc.
That ended up being Here Comes China (https://herecomeschina.com/), which has been a huge success.
Godfree has a couple of brothers who had the financial resources to bankroll his project, therefore he could heavily invest in Internet marketing. It really worked, because before Godfree passed away, he had something over a thousand paid subscribers to Here Comes China. His last post was on 16 June. I don’t know what’s going to happen to it.
Over the years, Godfree’s and I my email communication slowly expanded. It started to include future China Writer members like Dongping Han, Eric Arnow, who also lives in Chiang Mai, and Mobo Gao, with others being added. As it slowly grew, Godfree and I were talking about how we could institutionalize all this great communication and knowledge, and me being a committed connector and team player, I offered to create the China Writers’ Group. I’m very thankful that Godfree was a source of inspiration.
Today, China Writers’ Group has its own platform, Seek Truth From Facts Foundation,
https://seektruthfromfacts.org/
It now has 28 members and has been a huge source of information and inspiration for all of its members.
Godfree also played a crucial role in founding the Bioweapon Truth Commission (BWTC). Early on, I got in touch with Tom Powell, whose family has a long history in 20th century China. I created a small email group with him and Godfree. All of us were intrigued, because of Japanese Unit 731,which killed many hundreds of thousands of Chinese with bioweapons, 1935-1945. This technology was eventually adopted completely by the United States to launch Fort Detrick after World War II.
We knew there was someone who had a copy of Joseph Needham’s masterpiece, International Scientific Research Commission (ISRC), which definitively proves that the United States used bioweapons against North Koreans and Chinese during the Korean War. I was looking everywhere for a copy, but it was known that as soon as one went up for sale at auctions, they were scooped up by Mossad-CIA-MI6, never to be seen again.
The person who had a copy was releasing bits and pieces of it. They wanted to be the world’s gatekeeper and control its content, which was not noble conduct. So, Godfree said, Well, let me see what I can find out.
Godfree got his PhD in Education at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) in the United States and used his connections there to get into the digital catalog of all the libraries there. Lo and behold, he got a copy of it in PDF! That really helped kick start the Bioweapon Truth Commission.
Tom Powell added a lot, David Pear added more information, Jeffrey Kaye added more information and George Burchett added a ton of information too. Later, Dilyana Gaytandzhieva joined the club. It ended up with the big launch of the Bioweapon Truth Commission in 2020. Since then, it has become the largest single source of media – movies, articles, images, scans, interviews, books, you name it – in several languages, that is accessed by tens of thousands of people every year and it’s free,
Again, Godfree was instrumental in getting the BWTC launched.
When my wife and I moved to Chiang Mai from China in 2019, hoping to retire there, Godfree was very instrumental, using his relocation expertise in getting us settled there, and wouldn’t take a nickel from us, which was very generous of him. During the year that we were in Chiang Mai, Godfree, and I had a number of occasions to be together, along with my wife.
Godfree loved an Italian restaurant in Chiang Mai called the rhetorical question, Why Not? We used to go there a lot and have lunch and dinner together. My wife is as sharp as a tack and being French, loves a good debate, is usually right and doesn’t like to back down. Godfree, realizing this fairly quickly, handled the situation with panache, with his beaming smile, wry wit and junzi (Chinese for the perfect gentleman) demeanor.
We went to his house a few times. It was a rental, very much in the Confucius temple style. Spartan and functional. Every morning, early – 4-5 o’clock – Godfree did yoga, taichi and stretches. Then, several times a week, he would get a Thai massage from a local masseuse. He always liked to remind me, and I’m sure it’s true, that there was more than just a massage that he was getting!
For about 30 years, after he got his degree at UMass, he became a member of an ashram, run by Adi Da Samraj (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Da), based in Fiji in the Pacific.
It’s where Godfree got his first name. Born Paul Roberts, Adi Da christened him “Godfree”, for learning how to live without a god. In the ashram, he was everything from a cook, to handyman, to driver, to a helping hand, organizer and confidant to Adi Da.
With his PhD in Education, Adi Da asked him to teach his four young daughters. Godfree became their school principal and taught them English. For the other subjects, Godfree had a budget to bring in the best teachers from around the world.
Godfree was married to a Black-American woman who was also a member of the ashram. They never had children, got a divorce, I think in 2008, when Adi Da died and Godfree left Fiji.
Godfree used to tell us some great stories about everything that he did there. One of the more salacious ones is that Adi Da would cycle through asceticism, then to epicurianism and lots of wild sex. Adi Da would suddenly say, we need to release energy and called for inter-member orgies and partner swapping. Thus, for two or three weeks, it was just one gigantic sex fest, everybody was involved and Godfree obviously got a big kick kick out of that.
This is not much different than the wild side of Zhuangzi, which gets us back to China (https://radiosinoland.com/2026/07/07/samui-real-invited-jeff-j-brown-to-give-his-presentation-on-chinas-great-philosophers-part-i-of-ii-with-critical-qa-afterwards-must-see-read-to-understand-the-chinese-people-radio-sinoland-260/).
Godfree loved to tell these stories and my wife and I loved to hear about his life in the ashram.
In 2018, Godfree and I traveled together to Hanoi, Vietnam, to meet George Burchett and spent several days there, to celebrate finding Joseph Needham’s book. George Burchett was providing a lot of information for the BWTC, especially in Russian, including Needham’s book. The first night, we both got food poisoning. Luckily, it was only a 24-hour bug. We were okay for the rest of the trip. That was a fun time with Godfree traveling to Vietnam together and bonded our friendship.
After I launched China Rising Radio Sinoland (from the old 44 Days website), I interviewed Godfree a number of times. Godfree still is the most frequent guest on my show from the very beginning. I will list all of our shows at the end of this encomium,because they really tell you much about Godfree the man, and show what kind of a person he was.
For many months, I was bugging Godfree to get back on the show and have another conversation. He wouldn’t reply, wouldn’t reply, wouldn’t reply, which was not like him. I kept asking, when he finally told me that he was injured by the mRNA COVID vaccine that he got in Thailand. He confided that he was wobbly, had a hard time walking, had a hard time standing and could not be in front of a camera anymore.
In the email that he sent me to tell me that he had been vaccine injured, he called them BASTARDS, for what thy did to him, which is an appropriate word. He liked to go back to Australia every year for a visit to see his brothers, who are still there and I assume younger than he was. That’s why he got the injection, so he could fly to his home near Brisbane, Australia, on the Gold Coast. Unfortunately it didn’t work out for him.
I will miss Godfree terribly. We were great friends for 15 years, worked together professionally, helping each other and had some great times together personally. His ever-beaming, infectious smile, brainy wit, cool, junzi demeanor and droll, wry humor will not be forgotten.
Rest in Peace, my friend!
Radio Sinoland shows with Godfree Roberts
Go Russia GO!
Go Iran GO!
Go China GO!
Go DPRK GO!
Go “RICK”! Go Asian Quad!
KICK JUDEO-TALMUD-TANAKH ASS!!!
Support, donations and contributions for my work here, any amount, one time or monthly,
A to Z support. Thank you in advance, Jeff
Checks or cash: mail to: Jeff J. Brown, 7 rue du Général de Gaulle, Équeurdreville 50120, France
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Further study
The China Trilogy is an honorary degree in Chinese Studies. Don’t miss out!
https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00TX0TDDI/allbooks and
Jeff J. Brown’s libraries and catalogues A-Z: 1,000s of hours of research, writing, editing and podcasting.
https://radiosinoland.com/2025/11/30/jeff-j-browns-ever-expanding-collection-of-living-libraries-and-catalogues-many-years-and-1000s-of-hours-of-writingpodcasting-take-advantage-of-them-radio-sinoland-2025-year-of-the-wood-snake/
Do yourself, your friends, family and colleagues a favor, to make sure all of you are Sino-smart:
Google ebooks (Epub) and audiobooks:
44 Days Backpacking in China: The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=YBKHEAAAQBAJ
https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details?id=AQAAAECCkQXRlM
China Rising: Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=YNmLEAAAQBAJ
https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details?id=AQAAAECCfHo86M
BIG Red Book on China: Chinese History, Culture and Revolution
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=6Wl4EAAAQBAJ
https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details?id=AQAAAECCfHo86M
Amazon print and ebooks (Kindle):
44 Days Backpacking in China: The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1484939999/
China Rising: Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations
https://www.amazon.com/China-Rising-Capitalist-Socialist-Destinations/dp/0996487042
BIG Red Book on China: Chinese History, Culture and Revolution
https://www.amazon.com/BIG-Red-Book-China/dp/1673322719/
Author page:
https://www.amazon.com/Mr.-Jeff-J.-Brown/e/B00TX0TDDI
Praise for The China Trilogy:
Why and How China works: With a Mirror to Our Own History
JEFF J. BROWN, Editor, China Rising, and Senior Editor & China Correspondent, Dispatch from Beijing, The Greanville Post
Jeff J. Brown is a geopolitical analyst, journalist, lecturer and the author of The China Trilogy. It consists of 44 Days Backpacking in China – The Middle Kingdom in the 21st Century, with the United States, Europe and the Fate of the World in Its Looking Glass (2013); Punto Press released China Rising – Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations (2016); and BIG Red Book on China (2020). As well, he published a textbook, Doctor WriteRead’s Treasure Trove to Great English (2015). Jeff is a Senior Editor & China Correspondent for The Greanville Post, where he keeps a column, Dispatch from Beijing and is a Global Opinion Leader at 21st Century. He also writes a column for The Saker, called the Moscow-Beijing Express. Jeff writes, interviews and podcasts on his own program, China Rising Radio Sinoland, which is also available on YouTube, Stitcher Radio, iTunes, Ivoox and RUvid. Guests have included Ramsey Clark, James Bradley, Moti Nissani, Godfree Roberts, Hiroyuki Hamada, The Saker and many others. [/su_spoiler]
Jeff can be reached at China Rising, [email protected], Facebook, Twitter, Wechat (+86-19806711824/Mr_Professor_Brown, and Line/Telegram/Whatsapp: +33-612458821.
Read it in your language • Lealo en su idioma • Lisez-le dans votre langue • Lies es in deniner Sprache • Прочитайте это на вашем языке • 用你的语言阅读
[google-translator]
Wechat group: search the phone number +8619806711824 or my ID, Mr_Professor_Brown, friend request and ask Jeff to join the China Rising Radio Sinoland Wechat group. He will add you as a member, so you can join in the ongoing discussion.
I contribute to