Barbara Francis - You Do Not Travel in China at the Full Moon

In April 1938 Agnes Moncrieff, New Zealand YWCA foreign secretary to the YWCA of China, wrote to her mother - "You do not travel in China at the full moon if you can help. There are always air raids." Agnes, or Nessie, Moncrieff arrived in China in 1930 and was part of humanitarian aid and reconstruction work there during the second Sino-Japanese war, when Japan invaded China and millions were killed in the ensuing conflict. Barbara Francis met Nessie Moncrieff in Wellington in 1956 and they remained friends up until Moncrieff's death in 1988. In 2007, Francis discovered that the Alexander Turnbull Library had a collection of Moncrieff's letters and reports sent home to Aotearoa, and she set about editing them, sharing her friend's story in a new book You Do Not Travel in China at the Full Moon: Agnes Moncrieff's Letters from China 1930-45.