Youthful New Zealand businessman Victor Percival saw the commercial isolation of China by Western powers following the Communist revolution of 1949 as an almost certain failure. China, he believed, would inevitably take the place of Imperial Britain as New Zealand's principal trading partner. In 1956 he set out in defiance of Western governments, including his own, to find out for himself the reality of his belief to develop a relationship between the Chinese people and the West. Over more than half a century Percival, or Pan Xi Fu (Western Bhudda) as Chinese named him, experienced among the people and officials of China the turmoil of revolution; the unyielding hardship of Maoist policies; the transformation of China from industrial backwater to economic and military powerhouse; and its openings to the West. He became the confidante of prime ministers and ambassadors. When New Zealand in 2008 signed the world's first country-to-country Free Trade Agreement with China, and other nations lined up to secure such an arrangement, it was Victor Percival whom New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark termed: The man who started it all. This is his story.