He Dongsheng went to the toilet, we were all set to go our separate ways.
“Shall we leave together?” he asked when he came back, and this time I replied, “Yes, thanks.” I didn’t want to stay behind and listen to Jian Lin’s maudlin ranting about Wen Lan.
I felt a little awkward as we walked down to the underground parking lot. He Dongsheng didn’t say anything and I didn’t want to start a conversation for fear of being rebuffed, so I just kept quiet.
He drove a black Land Rover SUV, a kind of foreign import that was so common in Beijing that it was quite unobtrusive. His licence plate was also an ordinary Beijing number-somebody had probably loaned him the car.
After he started the engine, He Dongsheng took a small electric instrument, like a TV remote, out of his shirt pocket. One touch and a small green light came on, and three seconds later two more green lights came on. He put the thing back in his pocket and said, “Nothing’s going on.”
I was hesitant to ask, but he came out with an explanation. “It’s an anti-bugging and anti-tracking device.”
“Who would dare to bug or track you?” I could not help asking.
“They all would!” he replied. “The Central Discipline Committee, State Security, Public Security, the People’s Liberation Army General Staff Department… There are so many organizations and so many people, who can say for sure? Who doesn’t have enemies? I monitor people and people monitor me. I know your secrets and you know mine, there’s a dossier on everybody, that’s the way the game is played.”
I was learning again. Even the Party and national leaders are afraid they’re being watched. As I fastened my seat belt, I acted so cool, pretending that I had seen it all before and nothing could shock me.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“Happiness Village Number Two.”
He knew it well.
I asked him if he’d seen any of our Prosperous China Conference classmates. “No” was all he said.
I thought he was finished, but then he went on. “Shui Xinghua is a concerned capitalist. You know what I learned from that Prosperous China Conference?”
“What?”
“That was when I first realized,” he said, “that the intellectual elites of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong think about things in completely different ways-their awareness, discourse, concepts of history, and worldviews are fundamentally different. And furthermore, not only do
I’d lived in all three of these places and understood what he was saying. It was rather remarkable that he had only to attend one Prosperous China Conference to pick up on this difference.
“The last couple of years the elites of Taiwan and Hong Kong have all been obediently learning from the mainland,” I said.
“It is not easy for outsiders to understand Chinese affairs,” he responded.
We must have been speeding, because just then a traffic cop pulled us over. I was thinking that this cop didn’t know what was good for him. I watched He Dongsheng bring the car to a stop while talking into his cell phone. “I’m at Gongti East Road, almost at Xindong Road-okay.”
Then he just hung up his cell phone while a very fat traffic cop asked him for his driving licence. He didn’t respond, and when the cop asked him again he simply said, “Wait a minute,” without even giving him a glance. I could see that the traffic cop was about to lose his temper, but fortunately just then he received a phone call. As the cop answered his phone, He Dongsheng started his engine and drove off. “My secretary will handle it,” he said.
I thought his secretary must have received many late-night calls like this one-then he has to clean up the mess. Being a big shot’s secretary is a hell of a hard job.
After all that, He Dongsheng didn’t say another word. I was a little bit sorry because I was enjoying his lectures. To tell the truth, I rather liked this insomniac Party and national leader.
Wudaokoupengyou
One morning after May 1, when I turned on my computer, I saw I had an e-mail from
She was asking me to wait for her in front of the open-air farmers’ market near Gongti South Gate.
I always like to browse around these farmers’ markets. The north China seasons are quite distinct and have different fruits and vegetables. You can see this most clearly in the farmers’ markets-not to mention that the produce is far fresher than in the supermarkets. Farmers’ markets make me feel more like I’m making contact with the common people. You can’t avoid making contact with them when people crowd around you, pushing and shoving. If you block their path, those big Aunties and Uncles will push you right out of the way with their bags full of vegetables.
That day, as I waited, I was getting a little worried. Little Xi was already over half an hour late. The Beijing administrative authorities are not especially reasonable and would allow this farmers’ market to stay open only until ten a.m. It was almost that already when I heard Little Xi call me. “Lao Chen!”
I turned around to see her smiling and looking quite happy. “You made it!” I said.
“I’m here!” she answered.
She was carrying a canvas bag. “Wait here while I go in and buy some vegetables.”
“No, I’ll go with you.”
At ten minutes to closing time, the market was extremely crowded. I followed behind Little Xi. When she moved I moved, and when she stopped I stopped. I felt like I was always rubbing against her and I was conscious of her scent. But she was absorbed in haggling over prices, making her selections, paying and receiving change, and then shouldering her way through the crush of people on to the next stall. The ten minutes flew by quickly in this way and I felt a kind of unself-consciousness that I had not felt in a very long time.
In the e-mail Little Xi had said that she wanted to come to my place and cook me a meal, and that was something I was very much looking forward to.
“All we can eat today are vegetables and fruit,” Little Xi said as we left the market.
“That’s fine by me,” I said.
“You have rice at home, don’t you?” she asked.
I told her that I did.
I actually hadn’t had any when I received her e-mail, but then I’d rushed over to Carrefour’s and bought rice, cooking oil, spices, chicken, beef, and lamb. I even bought some kitchen utensils. I guessed that Little Xi would want to get some vegetables at the farmers’ market.
“Were you worried when I made you wait?” she asked.
“Not really,” I lied.
“I had to get rid of those guys who follow me,” Little Xi said with a marked change in tone.
On the way, she told me all the many things she had done in order to see me. A few days ago she’d been all around looking at houses as though she were intending to move. Finally she found a small furnished room in one of those old dilapidated 1970s Soviet-style block buildings. This morning she’d met with the landlord, moved a trunk full of things in, and paid the rent. Then she took a canvas bag and said she was going shopping.
She figured that one of the two men following her would remain behind to talk to the landlord about installing a bugging device while she was out. It was because her previous landlord suddenly changed his attitude toward her that she learned she was being followed and listened in on. The second guy might not follow her either, because she had just paid the rent and would be coming back from the supermarket soon. Even if he did follow her, there
