The airport was only a few miles outside Harare. The three cars in the convoy drove very fast with a motorcycle escort. Hong Qiu noticed that there were police officers at every street corner, holding up other traffic. They drove straight in through the airport gates and without further ado boarded a waiting Zimbabwe air force jet. Hong Qiu boarded through the rear entrance and noted that there was a screen separating the front half of the cabin. She assumed that this was Mugabe’s private aeroplane, which he had lent the Chinese delegation. After only a few minutes of waiting, the plane took off. Sitting next to Hong Qiu was one of Ke’s female secretaries.
‘Where are we going?’ Hong Qiu asked when they had reached cruising altitude and the pilot announced the journey would be fifty minutes.
‘To the Zambezi Valley,’ said the woman by her side.
Her tone made it obvious to Hong Qiu that there was no point in asking any more questions. She would eventually find out what was involved in this sudden trip.
Or was it really so sudden? It occurred to her that not even this was something she could be sure of. Perhaps it was all part of a plan that she knew nothing about?
When the aircraft prepared for descent, it swung out over the sea. Hong Qiu could see the blue-green water glittering down below and little fishing boats with simple triangular sails bobbing up and down on the waves. Beira was glistening white in the sunlight. Encircling the concrete centre of the city were endless shanty towns, possibly slums.
The heat hit her as she stepped out of the plane. She saw Ke walking towards the first of the waiting cars, which was not a black limousine but a white Land Cruiser with Mozambican flags on the hood. She watched Ya Ru get into the same car. He didn’t turn round to look for her. But he knows I’m here, Hong Qiu thought.
They headed north-west. Together with Hong Qiu in the car were the same two men from the Ministry of Agriculture. They were poring over small topographic maps, carefully checking them against the countryside they could see through the car windows. Hong Qiu still felt as uncomfortable as she had when Shu Fu first appeared outside her door and announced a change of plan. It was as if she had been forced into something that her experience and intuition warned her about, all alarm bells ringing. Ya Ru wants to have me here, she thought. But what arguments did he present to Ke that resulted in my sitting and bumping along in a Japanese car whipping up thick clouds of red soil? In China the soil is yellow; here it’s red, but it blows around just as easily and gets into your eyes and every pore.
The only plausible reason for her being present on this visit was that she was one of many in the Communist Party who were sceptical about current policies, not least those of Ke. But was she here as a hostage, or in the hope of seeing her change her mind about the policies she found so distasteful? High-ranking Ministry of Agriculture officials and a minister of trade on an uncomfortable car ride in the heart of Mozambique had to mean that the aim of the journey was of major significance.
The countryside flashing past outside the car windows was monotonous — low trees and bushes, occasionally intersected by small rivers and streams, and here and there clumps of huts and small well-tended fields. Hong Qiu was surprised that such fruitful ground was so sparsely populated. In her imagination the African continent was like China or India, a part of the poverty-stricken Third World where endless masses of people fell over one another in their efforts to survive. But what I’ve always imagined is a myth, she thought. The big African cities are not much different from what we see in Shanghai or Beijing. The culmination of catastrophic development that impoverishes both people and nature. But I knew nothing at all about African rural areas until now as I actually see them and travel through them.
They continued in a north-westerly direction. In some places the roads were so bad that the cars had to slow to a walking pace. The rain had penetrated the hard-packed red earth, loosened up the road surface and turned it into deep ruts.
They eventually came to place called Sachombe. It was an extensive village with huts, a few shops and some semi-derelict concrete buildings from the colonial period when the Portuguese administrators and their local assimilados had ruled over the country’s various provinces. Hong Qiu recalled reading about how Portugal’s dictator Salazar had described the gigantic land masses of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, which he ruled with an iron fist. In his linguistic world these distant countries were called ‘Portugal’s overseas territories’. That was where he had sent all his poor, often illiterate, peasants, partly to solve a domestic problem and at the same time to build up a colonial power structure concentrated on the coastal areas even as late as the 1950s. Are we about to do something similar? Hong Qiu wondered. We are repeating the injustice, but we have dressed ourselves in different costumes.
When they left their cars and wiped the dust and sweat from their faces, Hong Qiu discovered that the whole area was cordoned off by military vehicles and armed soldiers. Behind the barriers she could see curious natives observing the strange foreign guests. The poor are always there, she thought — the ones whose interests we say we are looking after.
Two large tents had been erected on the flat stretch of sand in front of the white buildings. Even before the convoy came to a halt a large number of black limousines had assembled, and there were also two helicopters from the Mozambique air force. I don’t know what’s in store, Hong Qiu thought, but whatever it is, it’s something important. What can have made Minister of Trade Ke suddenly agree to visit a country that isn’t even on our programme? A small part of the delegation was due to spend a day in Malawi and Tanzania, but there was no mention of Mozambique.
A brass band came marching up. At the same time a number of men emerged from one of the tents. Hong Qiu immediately recognised the short man leading the way. He had grey hair, wore glasses and was powerfully built. The man who was now greeting Minister of Trade Ke was none other than Mozambique’s newly elected president Guebuza. Ke introduced his delegation to the president and his attendants. When Hong Qiu shook his hand, she found herself looking into a pair of friendly yet piercing eyes. Guebuza is no doubt a man who never forgets a face, she thought. After the introductions, the band played the two national anthems. Hong Qiu stood stiffly to attention.
As she listened to the Mozambique national anthem she looked around for Ya Ru but could see no sign of him. She hadn’t seen him since they arrived in Sachombe. She continued scrutinising the group of Chinese present and established that several others had vanished after the landing in Beira. She shook her head. There was no point in her worrying about what Ya Ru was up to. More important just now was that she should try to understand what was about to happen here, in the valley through which the Zambezi River flowed.
They were led into one of the tents by young black men and women. A group of older women danced alongside them to the persistent rhythm of drums. Hong Qiu was placed in the back row. The floor of the tent was covered in carpets, and every memberof the delegation had a soft armchair. When everybody was comfortably seated, President Guebuza walked up to the lectern. Hong Qiu put on her earphones. The Portuguese was translated into perfect Chinese. Hong Qiu guessed that the interpreter came from the leading school in Beijing that exclusively trained interpreters to accompany the president, the government and the most important business delegations in their negotiations. Hong Qiu had once heard that there wasn’t a single language, no matter how small and insignificant, that didn’t have qualified interpreters in China. That made her proud. There was no limit to what her fellow citizens could achieve — the people who, until a generation ago, had been condemned to ignorance and misery.