4
A case of fatal encephalitis led to my move to Zhongnanhai. Outbreaks of encephalitis, transmitted through the bite of a mosquito, are common during summer and autumn in Beijing, and knowledgeable doctors have learned during the encephalitis season to be particularly attuned to the symptoms of this potentially fatal inflammation of the brain. Encephalitis can be treated and cured with Chinese herbal medicine if it is caught in the early stages, when it often appears as nothing more serious than a flu. If undetected, the patient becomes disoriented and often dies.
In the damp, rainy Beijing summer of 1950 the mosquitoes were especially numerous. When a staff member in Zhongnanhai contracted encephalitis, the young and inexperienced clinic “doctor” diagnosed the illness as a simple flu. The staff member died. Yang Shangkun and Zhou Enlai, concerned about Mao's health, were alarmed. The staff member's apartment compound was very near Mao's. If a mosquito could kill someone so close, the disease could also be carried to Mao.
The young director of the Zhongnanhai medical clinic was fired, the clinic was reorganized, and a campaign against disease-carrying pests was launched. The Fragrant Hills Clinic was moved to Zhongnanhai as part of the reorganization. The move changed my life.
Backward and poorly equipped, the Zhongnanhai Clinic was being refurbished for the country's new leaders, along with the rest of Zhongnanhai.
Zhongnanhai, dominated by the Middle and South lakes, from which its name derives, is magnificently landscaped, surrounded by the same vermilion wall that once enclosed the Forbidden City. The place is so secret and so well constructed that it is impossible to see in or over the walls from anywhere in the city, and never since the communists came to power have I seen a book that accurately describes the layout. Armed soldiers from the Central Garrison Corps, under the command of the army's general staff, kept guard at the gates, and entry into the grounds was limited to people who lived and worked there and to specially invited official visitors. The offices of the State Council, headed by Zhou Enlai, occupied the buildings in its north—in the area of the Middle Lake. In addition to Mao, several other of the country's top leaders—Zhu De, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Peng Dehuai, Deng Xiaoping, Li Xiannian, Dong Biwu, Li Fuchun, and Chen Yi—lived within Zhongnanhai, in elegant traditional courtyard-style walled compounds. Ranking staff members lived there, too. I was given a small apartment on the grounds. Later, when I was assigned a larger apartment, Lillian and our infant son, John, moved in with me.
Even within the grounds, security at Zhongnanhai was tight. Access from place to place was restricted, and sentries checked everyone's passes. Working in the clinic, near Mao's residential compound, I carried a B pass and was restricted to the clinic and the area around the apartment building where I lived. Lillian also had a B pass, but her freedom of movement was more restricted.
As director of the Zhongnanhai Clinic, I cared for many of the top leaders, those living both in Zhongnanhai and elsewhere in Beijing. I treated their family members, too. Having spent eight years fighting Japan and another four years in civil war against the nationalists, many of the leaders had only recently married, and a minor baby boom was erupting. I treated the children, too. My workload was heavy, and I had little time for leisure or rest.
I applied to join the party, but my background was problematic. Obviously, I was not the stuff of which good communists were made. My father had been a high-ranking official in the Guomindang government, and while Zhou Enlai had invited him to return to Beijing and provided him protection, many still viewed him as “reactionary.” My father-in-law had been a wealthy landlord in Anhui province, and with nationwide land reform still in progress, he had been declared an “enemy of the people,” denied all rights of citizenship, and deprived of all means of livelihood. He was utterly dependent on me.
My wife was suspect, too. Before liberation she had worked for both the United States Air Force and the British Council, and there were rumors that she had been a secret agent for these two “imperialist” countries.
My activities as a youth also made me suspect. In the detailed autobiography I wrote when applying for party membership, I said that while I was in middle school in Suzhou, all the tenth graders were required by the Guomindang government to undergo three months of military training. After training, I had been expected to join the Guomindang's National Renaissance Society. At the end of military training, nothing more was said about the society, nor was I ever involved in any of its activities. As it turned out, the National Renaissance Society was the predecessor of the Three Principles of the People Youth League, a political organization connected with the Blue Shirt Society, one of the Guomindang's secret spy agencies. The party members investigating my application could not believe I had never been actively involved in the Renaissance Society. How could anyone have joined such a notorious organization without participating in its activities?
They were also suspicious because part of my internship after medical school had been spent working as a military doctor under the Guomindang.
The party sent agents to investigate my background, certain, no doubt, that I had been an active member of the Renaissance Society, perhaps even a spy myself. A decision on my party membership was indefinitely delayed.
Nonetheless, I wanted to contribute to the unfolding revolution. I volunteered to join a land-reform team going into the villages to direct the redistribution of land and property from the big landlords to the poor, landless peasants. Though my own parents-in-law had already lost all their property, I still supported the movement. Land reform was a means to end the centuries of oppression in the countryside and to improve the lot of the rural poor. Only years later did friends who had participated dare tell me how violent the movement had often been, and how frequently unfair. But I was not allowed to participate in the land reform. My medical services, I was told, were needed in Zhongnanhai.
When the Korean War broke out in the summer of 1950, I volunteered. I had not participated in the war of resistance against Japan or in the civil war against the nationalists, but I wanted a chance to serve my country, even though I was certain that China would be defeated. The United States was so much more advanced than China, and American equipment was much better.
I followed the war closely, surprised and thrilled that China was not only holding its own but was actually defeating the United States forces in battle after battle. It was the first time in more than a century that China had engaged in war with a foreign power without losing face. I was appalled, too, over reports that the United States was using bacteriological warfare in Korea. Even as the Korean War dragged on inconclusively, I was proud to be Chinese. But my superiors refused to allow me to participate, arguing again that my services were more valuable in Zhongnanhai.
I became depressed, frustrated at not being allowed to contribute to the revolution, disappointed at not being able to continue my career as a surgeon. I felt remote from the revolutionaries who were my patients and was unhappy that my application for membership in the party was so long delayed.
In the midst of my malaise, in the spring of 1952, I had my first encounter with Mao's family. It happened when Mao's son Anqing, then about thirty years old, was brought to the clinic in the midst of a psychotic episode—unable to sleep, constantly pacing the floor and talking to himself. Mao had had two sons—Mao Anqing and Mao Anying—by Yang Kaihui, the first of his freely chosen wives. Yang Kaihui was executed by the Guomindang in 1930 for refusing to betray her husband even as Mao, hundreds of miles away in the Jiangxi soviet base area, had already married He Zizhen. After Yang Kaihui's execution, the two boys went to Shanghai, where they had to fend for themselves like vagabonds, barely eking out enough to live. Some who knew Mao Anqing attributed his mental illness to the brutal beatings he had suffered at the hands of the Shanghai police. The two children were discovered only years later, after the party had established its base area in Yanan. Mao sent them to the Soviet Union to study.
With the outbreak of the Korean War, the elder son, Anying, went to the front, where he died early in the hostilities during an American bomb attack. Meanwhile, Anqing worked as a translator in the Propaganda Department of the Communist party's Central Committee.
During the “three-anti” campaign that began in 1952 to counter the corruption, waste, and bureaucratism of Communist party cadres, Anqing discovered that one of his colleagues had stolen the royalties from some of his writings by forging his signature on various forms. In a fit of anger, Anqing struck the man. Mao was furious when he learned of the incident and reprimanded his son severely. Mao's anger seemed to have triggered the onset of the episode I was treating in the clinic. But I was not trained in psychiatry and the clinic could only offer short-term emergency treatment. I kept him sedated, waiting for the right moment to tell the family that he needed psychiatric care in a hospital.
One evening while I was in my office reviewing patient records, a nurse ran in, out of breath. Jiang Qing had come to see Mao Anqing and wanted me to tell her about his condition. She urged me to hurry.
Jiang Qing was waiting in the reception area adjoining Anqing's room accompanied by a smart-looking nurse. I had seen Mao's wife several times, but always at a distance. She had been an actress before joining the communists in Yanan, and I had expected her clothes to be different from the drab Mao suits that were the fashion of the day. But I was not prepared for her to be so elegantly dressed—in a neat wool Western-style suit, its open collar revealing a beige silk blouse underneath. She was wearing stockings, too, a real luxury in those days, and low-heeled black leather shoes. Her hair was thick and black, permed, and neatly combed into a bun. Her eyes were big and round, clear and dark, and her delicate skin was the color of ivory. She was about five feet three or four inches tall, rather thin, and her upper body seemed longer than the lower. She was then thirty-eight years old. I was thirty-two.
“You must be Dr. Li,” Jiang Qing greeted me in a cultured Beijing dialect after I had taken a seat opposite her. Not waiting for my response, she asked, “How is Anqing?” Despite her elegance, she struck me as cold. Some say that in her youth Jiang Qing was very pretty. I found her nice-looking but certainly not pretty. She was too aloof and haughty.
I described Anqing's case in detail and suggested that he be transferred to a psychiatric hospital or a sanatorium since the clinic at Zhongnanhai was not equipped to treat psychiatric cases.
She thought for a while before responding. “I will take your suggestion to the Chairman. Let him make the decision,” she finally said. We shook hands as she left, and I noticed that her fingers were long and soft, her nails tapered at the tips. She thanked me as she walked into the courtyard, where three security guards were waiting. She had seemed mistrustful, her eyes constantly probing, as if she was trying to uncover something beneath my words and behavior.
Shortly thereafter, Mao Anqing was diagnosed by other doctors as schizophrenic and sent to the seaside town of Dalian, in China's northeast. He lived in a private home, where he was cared for by a full-time nurse. Anqing and the nurse fell in love, but the family had arranged a marriage for him—to the younger sister of his brother Anying's widow—and the disappointed, heartsick nurse was forced to return to Beijing.
In the autumn of 1953, more than a year after the incident in the clinic, I met Jiang Qing again at the home of Hu Qiaomu, one of Mao's political secretaries and the leading party secretary of the Propaganda Department. Hu respected my medical work and we had become friends.
I had gone to Hu Qiaomu's residence in Zhongnanhai to treat him for an allergy and an ulcer. While I was examining him, his wife, Gu Yu, who worked in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, came running in. Jiang Qing had just arrived. “Quick. Put on your clothes,” she told her husband. Hu apologized that we had to stop the examination.
I met Jiang Qing on my way out. “Isn't this Dr. Li?” she asked, shaking my hand as Hu explained why I was there. My impression of her did not change with this brief second encounter. If anything, she seemed even colder.
As director of the Zhongnanhai Clinic, I was responsible for treating ordinary staff members, too, and because I treated everyone equally, without regard to rank, my reputation grew. Many people praised my work. They trusted me and often came to share their personal and family troubles as well, knowing they could rely on me to keep their secrets.
In the fall of 1952, I was unanimously voted a Grade A model worker by the General Office. It was a tremendous honor.
After that, I was finally admitted as a candidate for membership in the Communist party. The party investigators had found no evidence against me. They had located a man named Xu Bin who had served as company commander during my military training in 1936 and who was now undergoing hard labor at a camp in Guizhou province as part of his “educational reform.” Xu could not remember me at all. They spoke with a number of my schoolmates, all of whom confirmed that I had never participated in politics. Everyone they met attested to the truth of my autobiographical statements and my basically apolitical nature. The searching and checking had delayed my party membership for a full two years.
My “class background” and alleged political activities would come back to haunt me later, as China was swept by one political campaign after another, but in November 1952, I took the party oath, promising to devote my life to the Chinese Communist party and to sacrifice for the cause. My education in the fundamentals of Marxism did not extend beyond a reading of the Communist Manifesto and two articles by Mao, the enthusiastic education my brother had provided during my youth, and a few Marxist slogans—like the socialist principle “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
In fact, I never really became one of “them.” The vast majority of party members working within Zhongnanhai were a very special group, longtime veterans of the cause. They had joined the party when they were very young, often as teenagers, and they had endured the Long March. Most came from humble backgrounds and were woefully uneducated and still steeped in peasant ways. Many of them respected and admired me, and I, in turn, respected their revolutionary zeal and the sacrifices they had made for the revolution. But the gulf between us was unbreachably wide. I would always be an intellectual, a doctor, from an “exploiting class,” and therefore problematic, a target to “absorb, utilize, and reform.” My value to the party rested solely on my medical skills.
Just how valuable those medical skills were I learned on the evening of October 2, 1954, when Wang Dongxing phoned and invited me to his home. Wang, as director of the Central Bureau of Guards, was responsible for the overall safety of the country's leaders and was also the chief of Mao's bodyguards. I had met him while working in the Zhongnanhai Clinic, where he, his wife, and children always requested me when they were sick. We had become friends. He, too, was a veteran party member and a survivor of the Long March. He had turned toward communism as a ten-year-old peasant child, when, unschooled in the ways of urban life, he was threatened with arrest by a policeman who caught him urinating on a city street. Only a healthy bribe from Wang's father saved the young boy from jail. Disgusted with the corruption of the ruling Guomindang, Wang joined the Communist party. He met Mao and began to work with him in Yanan. After 1949, he was suddenly catapulted to a position of tremendous political responsibility, but he retained a deep respect for intellectuals and seemed to regard me, a Western-educated doctor, with particular esteem.
On the phone, he refused to tell me why he wanted to see me, insisting that we had to talk in person. I was puzzled. Wang was normally straightforward.
We met in the spacious room he shared with his wife within the grounds of Zhongnanhai. It served as his office, living room, dining room, and bedroom. His children and baby-sitter lived in another building, just across the courtyard. Wang poured a cup of tea and handed it to me. “It's this year's Longjing,” he said. “Give it a try.” Grown in Hangzhou, Longjing is the finest, most delicate tea in China. Unlike wine, which is best when it is aged, tea is at its best and most expensive when consumed the year it is picked. Wang was a connoisseur.
I savored the tea. “Is there something I can do for you?” I finally asked, curious about why he had called me there.
Wang turned serious. “Do you know why I have kept you in the clinic for so long, refusing to allow you to be transferred elsewhere?” he asked.
“No, I don't,” I responded, still puzzled.
“I have watched you for several years,” he said. “You are very well liked by the people in Zhongnanhai. You give everyone the same good care no matter who they are. You are never snobbish. Your medical skills, your easy manner, and your great dedication to your job have made a deep impression on all the comrades here, including the top leaders. Even Chairman Mao has heard good things about you.
“We have been looking for a personal physician for the Chairman for some time now, but it has been very difficult to find one,” he continued. “I have spoken to both Luo Ruiqing [the minister of public security] and Yang Shangkun [head of the General Office] and suggested that you become Chairman Mao's physician. I have made the same recommendation to Premier Zhou Enlai. They all agree. So yesterday I spoke to the Chairman about it. He has tentatively agreed, but naturally he wants to talk with you before making his final decision. You must prepare yourself. He will want to meet with you soon.”
I was shocked. I knew that following Ren Bishi's sudden death in 1950 all of the ranking leaders had been assigned personal physicians, but I could not imagine myself with such an assignment. From the clinic, I had often gazed out at Mao's compound. It seemed to me the heart of the entire nation. Its pulse affected everyone in China. But I had never imagined setting foot in the place. Mao himself remained distant and remote. My mind was suddenly a jumble of thoughts. “This isn't the job for me. I'm completely inappropriate. What about my background? The suspicions that I had been associated with the Guomindang? My father's real association with the Guomindang? My wife? All those rumors that she was a spy? She is not a member of the party, could never become a member of the party. No, this is a job for the son of a worker or peasant. I cannot change my past.” Besides, Chairman Mao already had his own personal physician.
My great-grandfather's disgrace came to mind as well—his honest insistence that the Tongzhi emperor was suffering from syphilis, the Empress Dowager Cixi's ire, my great-grandfather's demotion and his admonition, passed on through the generations, that his descendants were never to serve as physicians in the imperial court.
I refused the offer, sharing my misgivings with Wang Dongxing. He laughed aloud. “Why are you so worried? Your family background was thoroughly investigated before you joined the party. It is no longer a problem. Luo Ruiqing, Yang Shangkun, and Premier Zhou have all cleared you for this assignment. They know about your family background. Only after they were all convinced did I recommend you to the Chairman. As for the story of your great-grandfather—those were feudal times. His experience has nothing to do with now. You need not hesitate.” He laughed again.
“Does Fu Lianzhang know?” I asked. It was Fu Lianzhang's encouragement, after all, that had brought me back to China. He had found me my original job. Fu had become a vice-minister of the newly created Ministry of Public Health under the government's State Council. As chief of its Bureau of Health he was in charge of the health of the country's top leaders. He saw himself as Mao's close friend and loyal follower and was particularly interested in the Chairman's health. He would want to be consulted about my appointment.
“The decision was made by the central authority,” Wang responded. “Fu is your supervisor now, but he need not be involved.” Fu Lianzhang would be unhappy about being left out.
“I need to think about this,” I told Wang. His assurances had not convinced me. I was an outsider in Zhongnanhai, a member of the party without really being a part of it. My family background would never change. If I were to become Mao's physician, I would be under constant surveillance. My smallest mistake would be noted, recorded, and blamed on my bad family background. Any little error and I could be charged with plotting against the party. How easily I could be declared a “class enemy.” And what a terrifying crime!
“No, there is no room for reconsideration,” he responded. “We have already decided.”
Only then did I realize that I had no choice. “If I must accept this job, of course I will do my best,” I told him. “But no one is perfect. If I make a mistake, I hope it will not reflect badly on you.” Wang Dongxing was taking a great risk in sponsoring me for the position. If I got into political trouble, he would be held responsible and could lose his job, too. The tie would bind us until Mao's death.
“Don't worry,” Wang assured me. “Of course you must be very careful. You will often have to get advice from your superiors. But you also have to do what you think is right. You have your own opinions. You will have to take responsibility for what you do. That's all. I think you will do a good job. I don't think I have chosen the wrong person.
“Now, get yourself prepared for a meeting with the Chairman. After all, the final decision will be his. Just wait for my word. When he is ready to see you, I will let you know.”
Wang gave me Mao's medical records and asked me to look them over. He said that Mao would soon be leaving Beijing for a rest in the south. I was to continue working in the clinic until called.
Even as I waited, I had intimations of the danger ahead. Chen Zongying, the widow of Ren Bishi, one of the top five Communist party secretaries, warned me the job would be tough. After Ren Bishi's sudden death in the fall of 1950, Chen Zongying had become deeply unhappy. Nothing could bring her husband back. I could only try to comfort and console her. Chen Zongying was a marvelous woman, a good wife and loving mother. We had become friends.
I was accompanying her, on party instructions, on a trip to Shanghai and Hangzhou when she called Mao an old codger (Mao laotou) and warned me to be extremely careful. “He has a terrible temper and can turn mercilessly against you at the slightest provocation,” she said. “His wife, Jiang Qing, is notorious, cruel to everyone around her. She's a seductress, too. Don't allow yourself to be deceived by her. If you get in trouble there, no one would dare hire you. You could land in jail if anything were to go wrong.”
Chen Zongying's warning was shocking. I worshiped Mao. He could do no wrong. He had yet to be elevated to the equivalent of emperor, but his prestige was already unassailable. No one dared criticize him. Moreover, at that very moment a campaign against counterrevolutionaries was unfolding. If anyone had known of Chen Zongying's warning, she could have been accused of being a counterrevolutionary, anti-party element herself.
I never forgot her warning, and in later years her words often returned to haunt me. Even today I remain deeply grateful to her for having spoken so frankly.
The unfolding campaign against counterrevolutionaries in Zhongnanhai frightened me. Wang Dongxing, the director of the Central Bureau of Guards and the man sponsoring my appointment as Mao's doctor, was in charge, and the personal physicians of the country's highest leaders were a major target, accused of being members of an anti-party group.
I sat in the audience, stunned, as day after day for weeks on end the “struggle sessions” against the doctors continued. Every day, the staff at Zhongnanhai would gather to criticize the doctors, and everyone in the audience was expected to participate. The meetings lasted four or five hours, from late in the afternoon until well in the evening. Each day, I listened as the accusations against my fellow doctors became more and more exaggerated. The doctors had not been happy with their work. Each physician was responsible for the health of one party leader, but despite Ren Bishi's sudden death, the other leaders were all in good health. The doctors had little to do, but their appointments prohibited them from practicing medicine elsewhere. They were even younger than I, in the prime of their lives, and they felt their talents and training were being wasted. They had complained about not being able to do other work. Their “crime” was one of frustration at being asked to sacrifice their careers on behalf of a single healthy party leader. For this they were accused of being members of an anti-party group.
As the attacks against them continued, their “crimes” became twisted, blown out of all proportion. Jiang Qing's physician, Xu Tao, who had also served briefly as Mao's doctor, was a particularly hapless victim. His alleged anti-party crimes included torturing the Chairman's wife. The accusations would have been absurd if the potential consequences for Xu Tao had not been so great. The security guards, under Jiang Qing's direction, accused the doctor of pulling down the window shades too slowly when she ordered them drawn. The sun, she said, had permanently damaged her eyes. Xu Tao had deliberately given the Chairman's wife a chill by lowering the temperature below the eighty degrees upon which she insisted. When he showed her the thermometer reading precisely eighty degrees, she accused him of inflicting mental anguish. For this, Xu Tao was declared a member of the anti-party group.
In the end, all but one of the doctors were dismissed. The ones who were expelled were lucky. They went to Beijing Hospital, where they continued their medical careers, which was what they had wanted. Xu Tao, who had suffered the most grievous attacks, was the only doctor to remain behind, continuing, ironically, as Jiang Qing's personal doctor.
My heart went out to the doctors. They were my colleagues. I knew they had done no wrong. Certainly they were not members of any anti-party group. But I could not speak out on their behalf. To have defended them in public would have meant risking being declared an anti-party element myself.
My mental anguish was indescribable. It continues to this day. It had begun shortly after my return to China, when Lillian could not find work and I knew that had I given that Rolex watch to Yan, she would have found a suitable job. The anguish returned in 1952, during the “three-anti” campaign, against corruption, bureaucratism, and waste, when my brother and cousin were attacked. They were my relatives, the men who had introduced me to the Communist party, and I knew that they were innocent. But I was afraid to speak out. Had I defended them, I, too, would have been attacked.
Even before I began my work for Mao, I had violated my conscience. I could not say what was really in my heart. Ordinarily, when faced with a situation that ran contrary to my own beliefs, I tried to remain silent. But during the campaign against the physicians, I was forced to join in the attacks—for my own survival and for the survival of my family. I had to lie. It was the only way to save my job and be promoted. I wanted, above all, to survive.
But I did not accuse the doctors of opposing the party. I could not do that. Instead, I said they had been wrong to complain, that they had not done their jobs well, that they should learn to work better in the future.
Looking back over that period almost forty years later, from the perspective of safety in the United States, I know I would behave that way again. I felt I had no other choice. Too many family members were depending on me. There was no escape. If I were to return today and be asked to support the atrocities committed by the Chinese army on June 4, 1989, I would have to do so. Even today, the Communist party continues to demand that people attack the innocent. It requires people to pledge public support for policies with which they do not agree. Survival in China, then and now, depends on constantly betraying one's conscience.
What I did not know in the midst of my anguish during the purge of the doctors in 1954 was that the physicians were mere pawns in a power struggle between Wang Dongxing and Fu Lianzhang.
The roles of the two men put them inevitably in conflict. As a vice-minister of public health, Fu Lianzhang was responsible for the health of the party elite, and the leaders' private physicians had all been appointed upon his recommendation. Not having easy access to Mao or the other leaders, he used those appointments to his own advantage, ordering the men to report to him not only on the health of the leaders but on what they were saying and thinking. It was his way of reading the prevailing political winds, sniffing out potential political trouble. Mao, as the supreme leader, was his ultimate and most important concern.
But Wang Dongxing, as a high public-security official and head of the security guards, was responsible for the overall safety of the leaders, and thus their health was also his concern. Wang had considerably more power than Fu, was more ambitious politically, and had more direct access to Mao. Wang not only relied on the security guards to report to him on the leaders' activities but also tried to gather information from the doctors and nurses appointed by Fu, attempting thereby to create his own monopoly on information. Fu saw Wang's use of the doctors as interference; Wang thought Fu was trying to exert too much influence on the medical personnel.
The conflict was reaching a climax when Wang called upon me to serve as Mao's physician, which further exacerbated their enmity. Fu Lianzhang urged Mao to reject me, citing my problematic family background. Wang countered by taking advantage of the campaign against counterrevolutionaries to attack the physicians appointed by Fu. Wang won. The doctors were his unwitting victims. The rift between Wang Dongxing and Fu Lianzhang widened.
The campaign against the doctors was a painful education. The individual in China had no independent will. One had to obey one's “superiors” absolutely. There was no room for even the slightest disagreement. A single careless remark could be interpreted as defiance of one's superior and bring the wrath of the whole organization against you. “Struggle sessions” could be convened to criticize you; the “masses” could be organized to humiliate you.
The individual was merely a tiny cog in a large and complex machine. If the cog performed its functions well, it could be of use to the machine. At the slightest complaint, the smallest deviation from the norm, the cog could be thrown aside.
Much as I adulated Mao, my new assignment troubled me. “You will be granted no mistakes,” Lillian warned me, “not even minor ones.” Lillian knew better than anyone else how difficult my new position would be. We had been back in China for five years by then, and she had already grown disillusioned. The attacks against her—as the daughter of a landlord, as a suspected spy—had been unrelenting. But she also knew that I could not refuse the assignment. She was constantly worried.
Months went by after my meeting with Wang. I waited in anticipation, but the summons from Mao still did not come.