drinking my coffee, I looked around. The restaurant filled up. The staff escorted guests to prepared tables. They must have been regulars. I glanced at the menu. Western food was at least three yuan per person and other dishes were two to three yuan. Ice cream was one or two yuan. A meal would have cost at least 10 to 20 yuan. This was an eye-opener. There were still rich people in Beijing.
Seeing how surprised I was, Old Nie said coldly, ‘They’re spending remittances from abroad. They get a discount.’
‘Really? We had better go, then, and let them spend their remittances.’
He paid the bill and asked the waitress to wrap some cakes for me to take back for the three children. I was embarrassed – it had cost him five yuan, and now I was supposed to take the cakes home. And the three children were actually one 16-year-old boy.
Xiaoshan had arrived home before me and was waiting anxiously. I told him what had happened. He thought I should write to Xiong Zimin as soon as possible. If someone was concerned about us, we should say thank you.
I posted the letter. For a long time there was no reply. I thought he had probably returned to Wuhan. I didn’t have his Wuhan address, and waiting patiently was no option. So I decided to act on his advice and write a second time to the Ministry of Public Security.
Hu Feng had got to know Xiong Zimin in 1927, during the Great Revolution. After the defeat of the revolution, Xiong and Li Da and others ran a bookshop in Shanghai that published Hu Feng’s first translation, of a Soviet science-fiction novel called Foreign Devil, about an imperialist agent in the Soviet Union after the October Revolution. The bookshop was closed down because it published progressive literature. Afterwards, he returned to Wuhan and did some trading. After the start of the war against Japan, the Eighth Route Army set up an office in Wuhan, where he did some jobs, given his past links and the fact that he was a local man. When Dong’s wife arrived in Wuhan, she lived in Xiong’s house. Hu Feng met Dong there. Xiong was happy to distribute Hu Feng’s journal July, which played a role in the war. The office helped raise money for the journal and supported its publication. Hu Feng knew Xiong had no money and couldn’t even pay his contributors. He himself didn’t take a cent for his work. Hu Feng and Xiong remained friends until 1954. When Xiong came to Beijing with his wife on holiday, he came specially to see us. He was not a literary person, but he had a strong sense of justice. He urged Hu Feng to talk less, write less, and find a simple job. But Hu Feng didn’t know how to play it safe and always ended up saying what he thought, so he became the victim of an unprecedented onslaught.
I knew Xiong was on the National People’s Congress, but I didn’t dare bother him. I was feeling gloomy. I didn’t believe there was anyone in the world good enough not to fear getting into trouble. I thought it was normal for people to avoid me. Now Xiong Zimin had got someone to seek me out, I was happy and astonished.
In my letter to the Ministry I explained that Hu Feng’s old friend Xiong Zimin was a delegate on the National People’s Congress and had criticised me for not asking where Hu Feng was being held, since that was both allowed by law and a matter of basic humanity.
To my surprise, there was a response. I received a letter saying I could send some things for Hu Feng, but it repeated the previous message, that he needed nothing.
I prepared some foodstuffs. I thought, who knows where he’s being held? Perhaps somewhere outside Beijing. So I bought him some tins of anchovies, red-cooked beef, peaches, pineapple, chocolate biscuits and a pound of toffee. For a normal person that doesn’t sound much, but for someone who had been locked up for ten years it would be a feast. (Later, he told me he couldn’t even bear to throw away the toffee wrappers or the tin labels. He gazed at them every day, as if looking again at the outside world.)
I went to the Ministry of Public Security at the appointed time and place. I asked the police guard the way and had to walk for a while before I saw the waiting room. The attendant made a phone call, and asked me to be seated. He probably thought I had come to deliver a report or receive a briefing.
Apart from a man called Shi, my permanent contact, an even more senior cadre appeared, also very courteous. He looked at the things I’d brought and said:
‘We can get them to him quickly.’ He also said, ‘Actually, there’s nothing he needs. You should trust the Party. We’re all committed to reforming him.’
I wasn’t prepared to abandon the chance to see Hu Feng, so I asked again. I even said some old friends thought he was no longer alive.
This time, the reply was not completely dismissive: ‘I’ll tell senior levels. We’ll study the situation and let you know.’
On that note of hope, and of joy at the thought that he would receive the food, I left.
A month later, I received Xiong Zimin’s reply. The People’s National Congress had forwarded my letter, but he was convalescing somewhere else, hence the delay. He expressed his deep concern for the family and urged me to request a meeting with F.
I did so, and I also said the People’s Congress delegate Xiong Zimin had blamed me for not daring to show my concern for Hu Feng. You haven’t let me see him for ten years, how can I answer old friends’ letters, how can I behave as an upright person …
I don’t know if it was because of a change in the situation or because I mentioned the People’s Congress, but a week later Shi and the old cadre visited me to say permission had been granted. Naturally, they urged me to help him by mentioning things that would assist his ideological reform. The Party wanted me to play a positive role.
They gave me the address and a request form for a visit. The old cadre gave me directions on how to get there, where to change buses, and so on. I was grateful, for I’d never been in the remote suburbs. Without his help, I don’t know how I would have got there.
* Hu Feng is Zhang Guangren’s pen name.
Ten years without ever seeing someone dear to you. What will he be like? Will he be the man in my dreams? Will I recognise him? I don’t know how many times I imagined it, how many times I prepared my little speeches. That night, I stayed awake until the sky had turned white and then jumped out of bed and hurried to the bus stop.
I caught the first bus to Deshengmen, but when we arrived the first bus to the suburbs had already left. I waited for the eight o’clock bus to Shahe, where I had to change again. My belly was empty. Luckily, Shahe is a big town with several restaurants, so I had a bowl of soybean milk and a deep-fried dough cake before boarding the bus to Qincheng.
In the Cultural Revolution, quite a few cadres were kept in Qincheng, so it’s no longer a mystery. In those days, however, you weren’t supposed to talk about it.
The bus was small and rickety. Luckily it was early, so there were still seats, which made it less uncomfortable. The road was smooth, lined on each side by tall white poplars and low willows. Xiaotangshan, my stop, is a market town. A bit further on was an expanse of maize, a bright green curtain. In between were occasional patches of millet, an inlaid decorative pattern typical of the northern landscape. If I’d been on an outing, I would have thought it lovely.
I arrived at my destination. I waited until the other passengers had left before entering a small side road they had told me about. There was an iron gate and a sentry box.
A soldier of the People’s Liberation Army stepped out in front of me. I handed over my things. He made a phone call and told me to go in.
Secretary Shi had arrived ahead of me, by car, and came out with a duty officer. He led me along a concrete path lined on either side by flowerbeds. There were small buildings along the way, with drawn curtains. We walked straight on, to a reception point on the ground floor of a high building. Deep inside the main hall, I could see people escorting a man in a blue shirt and trousers in my direction. Not until he was in front of me