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Authors: Ryszard Kapuściński
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of
Sztandar Młodych
(The Banner of Youth) in Peking, and in exchange our own permanent correspondent will, at the appropriate time, travel to Warsaw.”
I listened, trembling from the cold, for I had neither a jacket nor a coat, and looked about in vain for someplace warm. Finally we piled into a Pobieda and drove to the hotel. We were met there by a man whom the reporters from
Chungkuo
introduced to me as Comrade Li. He was to be my permanent translator, they explained. We all spoke Russian to one another, which from now on would be my language in China.
Here is how I had imagined it: I would get a room in one of the little houses hidden behind the clay or sand walls that stretched without end along Peking’s streets. There would be a table in the room, two chairs, a bed, an armoire, a bookshelf, a typewriter, and a telephone. I would visit the editorial offices of
Chungkuo
, get the news, read, go out into the field, gather information, write and send articles, and all the while, of course, study Chinese. I would visit museums, libraries, and architectural monuments, meet professors and writers, in general encounter countless interesting people in villages and in cities, in shops and in schools; go to theuniversity, to the marketplace, and to the factory; to Buddhist temples and to Party committees—and to dozens of other places worth knowing and investigating. China is an immense country, I told myself, joyfully thinking that besides my work as a correspondent and reporter I would have the opportunity to gather an infinite number of impressions and experiences, one day to depart from here enriched by new insights, discoveries, knowledge.
Full of these high hopes, I followed Comrade Li upstairs to my room, while he entered one directly across the hall from mine. I went to close my door and at that moment noticed that it had neither doorknob nor lock, and, moreover, that its hinges were so positioned as to force the door to remain permanently open onto the hallway. I noted, too, that the door to Comrade Li’s room was similarly ajar and allowing him always to keep an eye on me.
I pretended not to notice anything and started to unpack my books. I took out Herodotus, near the top in my bag, then three volumes of the
Selected Works
of Mao Tse-tung,
The True Classic of Southern Florescence
by Chuang Tzu, and several titles I had purchased in Hong Kong:
What’s Wrong with China
, by Rodney Gilbert;
A History of Modern China
, by K. S. Latourette;
A Short History of Confucian Philosophy
, by Liu Wu-chi;
The Revolt of Asia; The Mind of East Asia
, by Lily Abegg; as well as textbooks and dictionaries of the Chinese language, which I decided to start learning at once.
The following morning Comrade Li took me to
Chungkuo
’s editorial offices. For the first time I saw Peking by day. In every direction stretched a sea of low houses hidden behind walls. Above the walls protruded the tops of dark-gray roofs, whose tips curled upward like wings. From a distance they resembled a gigantic flock of motionless black birds awaiting the signal to take flight.
I was given a warm welcome at the paper. The editor in chief, a tall, thin young man, said that he was happy at my arrival, for in this way we jointly fulfilled Chairman Mao’s prescription—let a hundred flowers bloom!
I answered that I, too, was very glad to be here, that I was aware of the tasks awaiting me, and that I wished to add that in my free time I intended to study the
Selected Works
of Mao Tse-tung, which I had brought with me in a three-volume edition.
This was greeted with great satisfaction and approval. The entire conversation, in fact, throughout which we also sipped green tea, came down to such exchanges of pleasantries, as well as to praising Chairman Mao and his politics of One Hundred Flowers.
After a while, my hosts suddenly fell silent, as if following an order. Comrade Li rose and looked at me—I sensed that the visit was at an end. Everyone said
Sztandar Młodych
(The Banner of Youth) in Peking, and in exchange our own permanent correspondent will, at the appropriate time, travel to Warsaw.”
I listened, trembling from the cold, for I had neither a jacket nor a coat, and looked about in vain for someplace warm. Finally we piled into a Pobieda and drove to the hotel. We were met there by a man whom the reporters from
Chungkuo
introduced to me as Comrade Li. He was to be my permanent translator, they explained. We all spoke Russian to one another, which from now on would be my language in China.
Here is how I had imagined it: I would get a room in one of the little houses hidden behind the clay or sand walls that stretched without end along Peking’s streets. There would be a table in the room, two chairs, a bed, an armoire, a bookshelf, a typewriter, and a telephone. I would visit the editorial offices of
Chungkuo
, get the news, read, go out into the field, gather information, write and send articles, and all the while, of course, study Chinese. I would visit museums, libraries, and architectural monuments, meet professors and writers, in general encounter countless interesting people in villages and in cities, in shops and in schools; go to theuniversity, to the marketplace, and to the factory; to Buddhist temples and to Party committees—and to dozens of other places worth knowing and investigating. China is an immense country, I told myself, joyfully thinking that besides my work as a correspondent and reporter I would have the opportunity to gather an infinite number of impressions and experiences, one day to depart from here enriched by new insights, discoveries, knowledge.
Full of these high hopes, I followed Comrade Li upstairs to my room, while he entered one directly across the hall from mine. I went to close my door and at that moment noticed that it had neither doorknob nor lock, and, moreover, that its hinges were so positioned as to force the door to remain permanently open onto the hallway. I noted, too, that the door to Comrade Li’s room was similarly ajar and allowing him always to keep an eye on me.
I pretended not to notice anything and started to unpack my books. I took out Herodotus, near the top in my bag, then three volumes of the
Selected Works
of Mao Tse-tung,
The True Classic of Southern Florescence
by Chuang Tzu, and several titles I had purchased in Hong Kong:
What’s Wrong with China
, by Rodney Gilbert;
A History of Modern China
, by K. S. Latourette;
A Short History of Confucian Philosophy
, by Liu Wu-chi;
The Revolt of Asia; The Mind of East Asia
, by Lily Abegg; as well as textbooks and dictionaries of the Chinese language, which I decided to start learning at once.
The following morning Comrade Li took me to
Chungkuo
’s editorial offices. For the first time I saw Peking by day. In every direction stretched a sea of low houses hidden behind walls. Above the walls protruded the tops of dark-gray roofs, whose tips curled upward like wings. From a distance they resembled a gigantic flock of motionless black birds awaiting the signal to take flight.
I was given a warm welcome at the paper. The editor in chief, a tall, thin young man, said that he was happy at my arrival, for in this way we jointly fulfilled Chairman Mao’s prescription—let a hundred flowers bloom!
I answered that I, too, was very glad to be here, that I was aware of the tasks awaiting me, and that I wished to add that in my free time I intended to study the
Selected Works
of Mao Tse-tung, which I had brought with me in a three-volume edition.
This was greeted with great satisfaction and approval. The entire conversation, in fact, throughout which we also sipped green tea, came down to such exchanges of pleasantries, as well as to praising Chairman Mao and his politics of One Hundred Flowers.
After a while, my hosts suddenly fell silent, as if following an order. Comrade Li rose and looked at me—I sensed that the visit was at an end. Everyone said
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