Yan Ba continued for another hour and forty minutes to spell out what China’s policy would be in the near future. When he eventually finished he was so exhausted that his legs were shaking. But the applause was overwhelming. When silence returned and the lights went up, he checked his watch and found that the clapping had lasted for nineteen minutes. He had completed his task.
He left the podium the same way he had come and hurried to the car that was waiting for him outside one of the entrance doors. On the journey back to the university he tried to imagine the discussions that would follow. Or perhaps the delegates would have to disperse immediately? Each hastening back to his or her own territory to start preparing for the momentous developments in Chinese politics over the next few years?
Yan Ba didn’t know, and he felt a certain sense of loss, now that he had vacated the stage. He had done his job. Nobody would ever mention his name when future historians came to examine the revolutionary events that could be traced back to China in 2006. Legend would have it that a significant meeting took place at the Yellow Emperor, but exact details would remain unclear. Those attending the meeting had been given strict instructions — note-taking was not allowed.
When Yan Ba got back to his office he closed the door, fed his speech into the shredder and then took the rubbish to the boiler room in the university basement. A caretaker opened one of the fire doors. He threw in the shredded paper and watched it transform into ashes.
And that was that. He spent the rest of the day working on an article about the significance of DNA research. He left his office soon after six and headed home. He felt a little flutter of excitement as he approached his new Japanese car, which was part of the remuneration for the lecture he had delivered.
There was a lot of winter still to come. He longed for the spring.
That same evening Ya Ru stood by the window of his large office on the top floor of the skyscraper he owned. He was thinking about the speech he had heard that morning. But what intrigued him most was not the content of the lecture. He had been aware for some time of the strategies being developed in the innermost party circles to counteract the major challenges that were in store. What had surprised him was the presence of his sister Hong Qiu, that she had been invited to take part. Even though she was a highly placed adviser to members of the inner circle of the Communist Party, he had not expected to meet her there.
He didn’t like it. He was convinced that Hong Qiu was one of the old-style Communists who were bound to protest at what they would doubtless call a shameful neocolonisation of Africa. As he was one of the keenest supporters of the policy, he wasn’t looking forward to finding himself pitted against his sister. That could stir up trouble and threaten his position of power. If there was one thing the party leaders and those who governed the country disapproved of, it was conflicts between members of the same family in influential posts. Nobody had forgotten the bitter antagonism between Mao and his wife, Jiang Qing.
San’s diary lay open on Ya Ru’s desk. He still hadn’t filled in the empty white pages. But he knew that Liu Xin had returned from his mission and would soon be face-to-face with him, delivering his report.
A thermometer on the wall indicated that the temperature was falling.
Ya Ru smiled and dismissed thoughts about his sister and the cold weather. Instead he thought about how he would very soon be leaving the cold behind as a member of a delegation of politicians and businessmen, visiting four countries in southern and eastern Africa.
He had never been to Africa before. But now, when the Dark Continent would become increasingly significant for China’s development — perhaps even in the long run a Chinese satellite continent — it was important that he be present when fundamental business contacts were established.
The next weeks would be intensive, involving a lot of travelling and a lot of meetings. But he had resolved to leave the delegation for a few days before returning to Beijing. He would venture into the bush and hoped to see a leopard.
Beijing lay before him. One thing he knew about leopards was that they often sought out elevated viewpoints from which they had an overview of the countryside.
This is my hillock, he thought. My clifftop. From my vantage point up here, nothing escapes my notice.
27
In the morning of 7 March 2006, the businessman Shen Weixian had his death sentence confirmed by the People’s Supreme Court of Justice in Beijing. He had already been given a suspended death sentence the previous year. Despite the fact that he had spent the past twelve months expressing his regret for accepting bribes worth millions of yuan, the court was unable to change his sentence to life imprisonment. Popular objections to corrupt businessmen with good connections in the Communist Party had increased dramatically. The party had realised that it was now of vital importance to put the fear of death into people who amassed fortunes through bribery.
Shen Weixian was fifty-nine when he had his sentence confirmed. He had worked his way up from simple circumstances to become head of a large chain of abattoirs that specialised in pork products. He had been offered bribes to give preference to various suppliers and quite soon started to accept them. At first, in the early 1990s, he had been cautious and only taken small sums, careful not to adopt a lifestyle that was obviously beyond his apparent means. Towards the end of the 1990s, however, when nearly all his colleagues were accepting bribes, he became increasingly careless, demanding bigger and bigger sums as well as making no attempt to disguise his opulent lifestyle.
He would never have guessed that he would eventually become the scapegoat in order to scare the others. Until his final appearance in the dock he had been sure that his death sentence would be reduced to several years in jail and that he would be released early. When the judge passed the sentence, adding that the execution would be carried out within the next forty-eight hours, he was dumbfounded. Nobody in the courtroom dared look him in the eye. When the police led him away he started protesting, but it was too late. Nobody listened. He was moved immediately onto death row where prisoners were kept under round-the-clock observation before being led out, alone or with others, to a field, made to kneel down, their hands bound, and shot in the back of the head.