Beijing Confidential by Jan Wong

Author:Jan Wong [Wong, Jan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-37518-6
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Published: 2007-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

It’s August 15, my 54th birthday. I’m just past the mid-point of my trip, with two weeks left before we board a plane back to America. Maybe Pan is wrong. Maybe she’s not in Beijing anymore. With so little time left, I’m losing hope.

But I’m looking forward to seeing my old roommate. Like Future and virtually every other teenager in China in 1966, Scarlet had joined a Red Guard faction in high school during the Cultural Revolution, enthusiastically attacking her teachers and school administrators until the entire education system shut down. In 1973 when we parted after a year as roommates at Beijing University, she gave me her red armband as a gift. As a wannabe Red Guard, I was deeply touched.

Scarlet had warned me that the road outside her condo, like everything else in the city, is still under construction. As my taxi pulls up, I see her waiting by the half-finished road. She has just dropped her granddaughter off at nursery school and was afraid I would have trouble finding her building. At fifty-five, Scarlet has gained a little weight. She was the tallest girl in our class and she had excelled at volleyball, her height enabling her to jump high enough to spike the ball at the net. She used to wear her Mao suits a size too big to conceal her figure. Now, she’s still hiding her figure with a denim jumper that has—I can’t believe this—an American flag embroidered across the chest. She gives me a huge hug, and grabs my hand, just like the old days. As we walk toward her building, I tell her I tried every way to find her.

“I’m no longer at Beijing Library,” she says. “I’m semi-retired. Sometimes I do some work at the Ministry of Culture, but you wouldn’t have known that. It’s a good thing you asked the All-China Journalists Federation to help. Normally, Beijing Library won’t give out my phone number.”

“I went to Beijing University to look for you.”

“Oh, they couldn’t find me,” she says shaking her head. “I have nothing to do with them.” Like many students of the Cultural Revolution era, including me, she doesn’t have fond memories of her alma mater. The last time I saw her, seven years ago, her husband had taken early retirement from his state job at the Forestry Ministry and started a wildlife documentary business. As he prospered and expanded into equipment rental, television series and feature films, Scarlet kept trading up homes. “I’ve moved five times in seven years,” she says, laughing.

One house had 3,400 square feet and, like Ben Mok’s villa, was near the airport. Her biggest was an 8,600-square-foot monster home north of Beijing. “Then Mao Mao had a baby,” she says, referring to her only child. “I’m a granny now. So we moved back to the city.” She and her husband live with their daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter. Mao Mao, a graduate in film editing, works in the family business. Scarlet’s son-in-law is a battalion-level officer in the People’s Liberation Army.

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