Completion of the task coincided with their 40th wedding anniversary. Xiao Qian had come to Britain in 1939 to lecture in Chinese and work as the only Chinese correspondent to cover the whole of the Second World War in Europe. The first two volumes were published earlier this year, and the final one will appear in China's bookshops later this month. My conclusion then was that it was a dead-end alley for China, so I had no intention of translating it.'' Xiao Qian, 84, still has that 1939 copy with his faded ink jottings on the title page. But on the table in his book-cluttered Peking apartment now is also the first full Chinese translation of Ulysses, the product of four years' meticulous work by Xiao Qian and his 67-year-old wife, Wen Jieruo. In Calcutta, she runs a dozen hospices for beggars found dying in the streets, clinics for lepers and homes for abandoned and handicapped children. Navin Chawla, her biographer, has claimed that in Mother Teresa's 460 centres every year she feeds more than 500,000 families, teaches 20,000 street children, and treats 90,000 lepers..

IN 1930, a Chinese student attending a lecture in Peking on modern literature heard of a writer named James Joyce and a book called Ulysses. At that time, Joyce's masterpiece was not available in China. Nine years later, when he arrived in London, the young man bought a copy ``I found it very, very difficult. As far as I am concerned, I know that I have to keep doing my work.'' She said she had ``forgiven'' the programme's producer, Tariq Ali.In Calcutta, it is difficult to find someone whose life has not been touched, directly or indirectly, by Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity, who wear the distinct white and blue-trimmed sari of the Untouchable sweeper caste who muck out the city's toilets. In an interview with the daily Anandabazaar Patrika, she defended her work with the city's dying and neglected ``It is for you to decide how you want to live.

Organised protest needs to be made.''Although Mother Teresa rarely gives press interviews, she broke her habitual silence to answer some of the film's charges. Mother Teresa sent an ambulance.''Many prominent Calcuttans have rallied to Mother Teresa's defence after attacks in the British documentary, which accused her of being ``a publicity-crazy egotist'' under her ``saintly facade''. She never proclaimed herself a saint; others have, and they have turned around to dismiss her for being too human, after all. Mrinal Sen, a progressive film director, fumed: ``The whole bunch of charges are the ugliest attempt at character assassination Unpardonable.

We tried taking her to the hospital but they wouldn't accept her So finally we called the Missionaries of Charity. So many times, Mother Teresa has found him lying in the street and carried him home.'' Sure enough, the dishwasher knew.A teacher, Meenakshi Dutta, said that three times she had rung the convent where Mother Teresa lives, and each time the nun had answered the telephone herself.``We found a beggar woman dying outside our house once. ``My mother and father were at Jimmy Carter's inauguration,'' he reports He made the leap when Ronald Reagan took the White House. His father followed; his mother, so far, has not.Mr Wamp believes his party can reach beyond white urban conservatives to the rural counties, even to Southern blacks He won 20 per cent of the black vote in the district ``It is pretty exciting.

I think we represent the value system of most people here better than the Democrats. Last Tuesday was a referendum [against] the advancement of socialism in this country.''(Photograph omitted). CALCUTTA is a city seething with 10 million people, a cauldron of volatile temperaments and political currents, yet even among hardline Marxists or Hindu extremists, it is nearly impossible to hear a bad word uttered against Mother Teresa. This ``Hell's Angel'', as the frail, 84-year-old nun and Nobel Peace laureate was portrayed in a controversial Channel 4 documentary, has graced the lives of many Calcuttans. Trapped by a taxi strike at Calcutta's Dum-Dum airport once, I asked one of the cafe waiters if he happened to know if Mother Teresa had returned from one of her many overseas trips ``One minute I'll ask the dishwasher,'' he replied ``Every time he gets his pay cheque, he spends it on drink. Sitting in his pick-up outside the Annex Cafe and idling the hours away, he says (thumping the steering-wheel as he raps out the words): ``We elected him and in the first 30 days he is harping on about gays and lesbians and homosexuals.''The beneficiary of Mr Douglas's switched loyalty is Zach Wamp, an effervescent 37-year-old property developer who won this southern district of Tennessee, centred on Chattanooga, for the Republicans He, too, comes from a staunch Democratic household.