In the spring of 1972 I met what I still think was the bravest man in China. An ordinary factory hand, he told me that the officially invited American China academics, of whom I was one, who the previous day had been brought to his ‘typical workers’ house’ in Canton, had been told a pack of lies by him and his family. In essence it was a Potemkin flat in which none of the new-looking things — TV, bicycles, kettles, even the bedding — belonged to the family. They lived near by in typical squalor. I had re-met him by chance very early the next morning and this daring Chinese invited me into his real flat and astounded me by telling me about his real life. This was during the Cultural Revolution and he was risking certain jail if not a bullet in the back of the neck.
I returned to my hotel where two things immediately happened. I was locked in my room by our Chinese handlers who scolded me for leaving the hotel unattended — by them. When I told my companions what had happened some of them said it was wrong of me to go out alone and, anyway, how did I know that the man who spoke to me was telling the truth? One person suggested that my informant might be a foreign agent, maybe from Taiwan. For the rest of the trip, when the two of us who found the constant deception enraging grizzled about it, the rest of the group reminded us that we were guests of the — very poor — ‘Chinese people’, and that in any event to complain, especially back home in the States, would strengthen American imperialism.
Beijing certainly got its money’s worth: for a few weeks of hospitality, including a late-night chat with then Premier Zhou Enlai, the Party had secured ten propagandists out of a group of 12, to do their best for China within the American academic elite.
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