Thinker, Failure, Soldier, Jailer: an Anthology of Great Lives in 365 Days--The Telegraph by Harry Quetteville

Author:Harry Quetteville [de Quetteville, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781311080
Publisher: Aurum

The Frenchman, then only twenty, had failed to distinguish himself at school but had managed to secure a job as an accountant at his country’s embassy. Shi, who spoke fluent French and taught Chinese to the diplomatic community, claimed to be a member of the Beijing Writers’ Association and the author of several operas and plays.

A few days later, when the two men met for dinner at a restaurant, Shi announced that his late father had been a university professor, and that one of his two sisters was a champion ping-pong player while the other was the wife of a famous artist. He also claimed to have a degree in Literature from the University of Kunming. Boursicot was dazzled.

Then, one evening, Shi told his new friend about The Story of the Butterfly, the opera in which he claimed to have performed one of his most famous roles. It concerns a beautiful girl who is unable to attend one of the imperial schools because of her sex; so she swaps clothes with her brother, and goes to school in his place.

Shi then claimed that he had in fact been born a girl, but his mother had passed him off as a boy because her husband had only two daughters and wished for a son; he had lived a masculine life ever since.

Boursicot was plainly ingenuous when it came to sex; his experience had been limited to a few fumbles with male schoolfriends, and he recorded in his diary that he was determined to have a physical relationship with a woman. His first such encounter with Shi, however, was not promising: the opera singer was wearing a leather jacket over a Mao suit, and in order to explain certain anomalies he said that he had been taking hormones to reinforce his male credentials.

In December 1965, shortly before the diplomat was due to leave China, Shi revealed that ‘she’ was pregnant It was four years before Boursicot returned to Beijing, this time as an archivist at the embassy. China had been in the grip of the Cultural Revolution, and Shi told him that their son, who had been born in August 1966, had been sent to a remote location near the Russian border for his safety. Boursicot was consoled with a photograph of the boy, who was called Shi Du Du.

It was during this posting that Boursicot met, at Shi’s house, two Chinese men to whom he confided that he had access to the contents of the French diplomatic pouch and other documents, including regular reports from French diplomats in Moscow, as well as from the embassy in Washington. He proceeded to bring them examples, which the men copied, until the end of his tour of duty in 1972.

In 1977 Boursicot managed to get himself posted to Ulan Bator, the capital of Mongolia. This was France’s smallest and most miserable diplomatic posting – but there was an opening for a typist and archivist, and Beijing was only a 36-hour rail journey away.

Meanwhile, security at the mission was almost non-existent, and he continued to pass information to the Chinese.

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