Customer Reviews

Beijing Confidential: A Tale of Comrades Lost and Found

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Jan Wong returns with a second sequel of sorts to "Red China Blues" with "Beijing Confidential". This book, along with "Jan Wong's China, Notes from a Not-So Foreign Correspondent",(1999) returns to Ms. Wong's stomping grounds of Beijing. Beijing Confidential is the more personal of the two, as on this trip she goes to expiate the sin of ratting out one of her fellow Beijing University students who approached her about getting to America, at the tail end of the Cultural Revolution. She takes on the near impossible task of finding this woman, apologizing to her and finding out what her life has been like. Written in Ms. Wong's concise, funny and informative style, Beijing Confidential repeats some of the content of Jan Wong's China, but its personal reportage redeems it. Neither book is available here in the US, but if you like Ms. Wong's work (and I do) both are available at Amazon Canada, and are worth purchasing!

What an engaging memoir of Beijing Ms Wong has written! "Beijing Confidential" is Jan Wong's highly readable account of her return to Beijing in 2006 on a burning mission to right a wrong she did to a fellow student back in 1972, when Ms Wong was one of the first foreign students accepted to study at Beijing University. Fast forward 34 years, and Beijing is now a capitalist's dream and the city is undergoing a major facelift in preparation for the 2008 Olympic Games. I really enjoyed Ms Wong's reminiscences about what Beijing was like in 1972, in the closing years of the Cultural Revolution, and how it has evolved into a sophisticated, wealthy city, although China itself remains a totalitarian police state. The back story of how Ms Wong tracked down the friend who she informed on is surprisingly suspenseful and full of twists and turns before reaching its conclusion. The description of Beijing now compared to 1972 is highly engaging and downright fascinating. After finishing the book, I feel like planning to go there for my next annual vacation! Five stars for this one- the best memoir I've read in quite some time.

Jan Wong was a third-generation Canadian of Chinese descent at Beijing University studying Mandarin and Chinese history during the early 1970s. In the midst of the Cultural Revolution she was one of only two westerners there at the time, and considered herself an enthusiastic Maoist. A fellow student (Yin Luoyi) asked Wong for help getting to the U.S. Wong, who would later marry an American living in Beijing while evading Vietnam-era draft boards, promptly turned Yin in to the department's Chinese Communist Party (CCP) representative, and Yin disappeared. Wong mostly forget about the incident for some 33-years while working in Beijing and Canada as correspondent for the Toronto-based 'Globe and Mail,' and purportedly losing her initial infatuation with Communism - along with most of China. In 2006 she returned to Beijing for month, along with her husband and two teenage sons. Her mission - find Yin Luoyi, learn what had happened, and apologize.

Jan claims that when she snitched on Yin, she didn't realize that there were labor camps for dissidents, and had assumed Yin would merely get a tongue-lashing. On the other hand, it seems incredible that she was not aware of the enormous turmoil enveloping the nation during the Cultural Revolution. Further, the disruptions had actually begun at Beijing University, education there largely ceased from 1966-1970, and even Deng Xiaoping's (very high ranking leader who later led China's economic revolution) son had been reportedly thrown out a fourth-floor campus window in 1968, causing permanent paralysis. Nationwide, an estimated 100 million were killed, imprisoned, and/or sent to labor. Undoubtedly this was well-known within the global Chinese community at the time. And both Jan and her American husband had participated in state-sponsored labor projects during the Cultural Revolution.

Regardless, finding Yin was not going to be easy. Beijing's population had risen to 16 million, there were then 400 million cellphone users (now 710 million) - all unlisted, about 40% of the population shares ten surnames, and Beijing residents had moved an average of three times during the past ten years. (In Mao's time most people remained in the same work unit for life - moving required permission, enforced by the issuance of food-stamp coupons.) Other possibilities included Yin Luoyi having died, moved somewhere else within China (1.3 billion total population), left the country entirely, and/or changed her name - either because of marriage or personal preference. Still another possibility - Jan had misspelled Yin Luoyi's name. Inexplicably, Jan did no preparatory work prior to arriving in Beijing - making the task even more daunting.

Early search forays included contacting the local journalists' group, and inquiries at Beijing University - both for Yin, and Jan's former classmates. Several former classmates were found, and ultimately they led Jan to Yin. During the interregnum, Jan and her family toured the rapidly changing city of Beijing. Readers learn that Chinese capitalists are not infallible - their six million square-feet 'Golden Resources Mall' (world's largest until 2006) in Beijing was completed in 2004 after only 20 months of construction (only four days late), opened to only 20 shoppers/hour instead of the anticipated 50,000/day. Problems included inaccessibility to both high-income Chinese and foreigners, most stores not taking credit cards, and downtown competition. Worse yet, the even larger (7.1 million square-feet) 2005 South China Mall is reported to be 99% vacant. While visiting a detective agency Jan learns there are 30,000 Internet police that quickly delete critical comments (if you're lucky). (The 'good news' is that Internet-users have much wider access to formerly forbidden topics - eg. 'tank man,' 'Cultural Revolution,' etc. compared to Jan's last visit in 1999.) Probably most surprising is that China, envisioned by Mao as a paradise of equality, has income inequality that slightly exceeds that in the U.S.! The really 'bad news' - the air pollution in Beijing.

In the middle of Jan's month-long stay her cell-phone rings - it's Yin Luoyi, now Lu Yi - after three name changes, two due to marriages, the other to avoid blackening her father's name. Jan is relieved that Lu believes her graduation-day expulsion from Beijing University was not due to Jan 'ratting her out.' Instead, it was the cumulative impact of thirty charges presented in a long department meeting. (Yin had assumed that Jan had been forced to testify against her, and was a bit taken aback though to learn that it was voluntary.) Lu was then sent home in disgrace to her parents in Mongolia, put under the watch of local CCP cadre there, and consigned to what appeared to be a lifetime of farm labor. However, after Mao's death, the Gang of Four's arrest, and three attempts, Lu was able to have her record expunged and given her diploma. Lu then studied to become an attorney, worked for the People's Liberation Army (PLA), and legally returned to live in and work at her new workplace in Beijing. In 2001 Lu left her secure PLA position, started her own business, and went to New York City to visit her brother. Returning to Beijing before 9/11, Lu then met and married a Beijing University physics professor. Between the two they have five residence properties. At least two are very nice by Chinese (and most American) standards, and one is near her former classmate tormentors. (Not surprisingly, no love lost there. One had also blocked Lu's first two efforts to clear her record.)

Bottom Line: Reading Jan Wong's journey to redemption was interesting and informative. Unfortunately, her integrity remains in question. First, there is the previously referenced question of whether she knew reporting Yin would likely cause problems. Second, she reports having renounced Maoism. Yet, at the end of her "Red China Blues" (1997) Jan describes being at a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Mao's birth, singing the 'Internationale' in Chinese while wearing a Mao badge and others looked strangely at her. It was "still one of (her) favorite songs" after witnessing the 1989 events at Tienanmen Square, interviewing numerous people who had suffered during the Cultural Revolution, and wondering what she had brought to Yin's life.

Wong's reporting adventures hit almost every spot. She's incredulously honest, funny, and full of oddball insights. This hunt to track down a friend betrayed is a long-shot chase through an unrecognizably transformed mega-city, muddling through to a wonderful encounter. Pulling together her network of friends and foes from decades back, Wong achieves a vista on the city and a whole generation. The mix of absurdity, tragedy, and inspiration is close to the maximal Beijing journey.

In this memorable book Jan Wong describes returning to Beijing in search of a classmate she betrayed during the Cultural Revolution. A starry-eyed young Maoist in 1972, Jan had left her native Canada to join the supposed workers' paradise in her ancestral land (see RED CHINA BLUES). As one of only two foreign students at Beijing University, she was approached by a classmate who dared asked about visiting the United States - a dangerous violation during the Cultural Revolution. Jan promptly informed on the classmate and she soon vanished. Now over three decades later, Wong returns with her husband and sons to search for the betrayed student she vaguely remembers as Yin. Was Yin exiled for her crime? Imprisoned? Killed? Searching for old colleagues and classmates, Wong finds several in Beijing. She notes how they have (and haven't) changed, and does the same with China. Maoism has been replaced by consumerism, rising prosperity, and a desire to emulate the West. Bicycles have given way to motor vehicles, traffic and pollution are nightmares, and the capital keeps expanding with rural migrants plus foreign students and business people. For better or worse China is increasingly a capitalist nation of shopping malls, McDonald's, Ikea, etc. Yet the Communist Party retains control, and the madness of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and Tiananmen Square Massacre (1989) remain taboo. Readers get an excellent view of modern China, its culture, and ongoing transformation, plus an added look at the older and wiser author.

This book makes a nice follow-up to RED CHINA BLUES, Wong's superb memoir about her years in China as a Maoist student/worker (1972-78) and later a foreign correspondent (1988-1994) for the Toronto Globe & Mail. But don't expect this later edition to match its predecessor, which I found so memorably on-target after visiting China in 1996 that I wrote the author. Note: This book has a Canadian version (BEIJING CONFIDENTIAL) and a U.S. version (A COMRADE LOST AND FOUND).