Out of Mao's Shadow by Philip Pan

Author:Philip Pan
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781416537069
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2008-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

ON BOTH OCCASIONS that Chen Lihua agreed to meet with me, she gave me presents. At the end of my interviews with her, she would tell me to turn off my tape recorder and then motion to her secretary, a young, efficient-looking man hovering nearby, and he would scurry over with bags of gifts. The first time, Chen gave me a Chinese-style padded silk jacket and a long cashmere coat, both of which she insisted I try on for size before leaving. The coat cost nearly five hundred dollars, according to a price tag that was still attached to it. The next time, she gave me another silk jacket, and told her secretary to slip a thousand-dollar Hong Kong banknote in the pocket. I objected strenuously both times, telling her that American journalists generally did not accept gifts and that it was against the Washington Post’s policies. But the Rich Lady would hear none of it. She said reporters from around the world had interviewed her and accepted her presents, and if I refused, she would take it as a personal insult. Both times, we went back and forth about it for several minutes, and when I finally relented and told her I would take her gifts and donate them to charity, she seemed satisfied that she had gotten her way.

We met in a conference room on the second floor of her mansion, probably the same room where she had wooed Gao. Hanging on the hallway outside were separate photographs of Chen shaking hands with each of the nine men sitting on the Politburo Standing Committee at the time, as well as other photos of her with past party leaders and with foreign dignitaries such as Colin Powell. In person, Chen came across as more down-to-earth than she appeared on television. She was a large woman, and she projected a maternal air. She clearly enjoyed receiving guests, but she also seemed insecure about her limited schooling and humble background. She often mangled her sentences, and she strained to sound more literate by stringing together idioms that made little sense the way she used them. She spoke at length about red sandalwood—its beauty, its history, its scarcity—and at one point, she made me pinch her arm to demonstrate its beneficial health effects. “I’m in my sixties now, but can you tell?” she asked. I politely said no. “I’ve had diabetes for seventeen years, but can you tell?” she continued. “No, you can’t. Red sandalwood is great for my diabetes.”

Chen happily repeated the story about the antique wardrobe that she rescued during the Cultural Revolution, and she was eager to tell me about her run-in with the swarm of killer bees in the mountains of Burma. But whenever I asked about how she made her fortune, Chen would get evasive and resort to platitudes. “It was all through hard work,” she told me. “Some reporters have asked me where my money came from. They all want to ask this question, and today you’ve asked it, too.

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