That made me feel like a freeloading literary type. Jian Lin always served Bordeaux, never Burgundy. After looking up Burgundy on the net, I told him about it; he seemed curious and wanted to know more. I hit on a plan. When I want back to Taiwan for the Lunar New Year, I looked up my secondary school classmate Ah Yuan.
Ah Yuan is the largest collector of Burgundy in Taiwan. When the global economy hit the skids, Ah Yuan’s wealth shrunk, but his Burgundy collection was still intact. I had never asked Ah Yuan for anything before, but this time I asked him to give me two bottles of good Burgundy. He gladly told me to take a few more bottles, but I declined because of customs duties. I took just two bottles, one white wine and one red.
I sent Jian Lin a short message asking him what was showing the following Sunday. I told him I was bringing a Bâtard-Montrachet 1989 and a Romanée-Conti 1999.
When I took the two bottles over to the restaurant, there weren’t any other guests, just me and Jian Lin. He carefully examined them, exclaiming, “Great wine, great wine … Let’s open it and let it breathe.”
“What’s on tonight?” I asked while he gently poured the red wine into a crystal decanter.
It was the 1964 film
Never Forget Class Struggle,
directed by Xie Tieli. “Have you ever seen it?” he asked.
“Are you kidding? If I’d seen it, Chiang Kai-shek would have had me shot.”
“Those were good times, 1964,” Jian Lin said.“The Three Years Natural Disaster was over, people’s living conditions were beginning to recover, and the Cultural Revolution had not yet started. But in 1959 Old Mao was unhappy. He had nothing to do after resigning his post as National Chairman, so he put out the slogan ‘Never forget the class struggle.’ And this film responded to his call to remind the masses never to forget that there were still class enemies concealed among the people. It was advance notice of the coming Four Cleanups Movement to cleanse politics, the economy, Party organization, and ideology. It was also a prelude to the Cultural Revolution.”
“I’ve invited my cousin to watch the film and taste your wine,” Jian later said as we were eating.
I didn’t remember ever meeting his cousin and I wasn’t particularly happy about sharing my expensive wine with someone I didn’t know.
Just then a rather stern and pale-faced man with sparse hair came in and greeted Jian Lin as “Elder Brother.”
“This is my cousin, Dongsheng. This is my good friend from Taiwan, Lao Chen.”
“He Dongsheng, we’ve met before,” I said as we shook hands. “It was at the Macao session of the Prosperous China Conference in 1992; you were the representative from Fudan University.”
“Yes, yes,” He Dongsheng said softly.
Jian Lin looked puzzled. “Do you two know each other?”
“Yes, yes,” He Dongsheng repeated.
We all felt a little awkward. “We met twenty years ago,” I said.
A wealthy Taiwanese named Shui Xinghua—meaning “prosperous China”—had set up a foundation that held four Xinghua, or Prosperous China, conferences in the early 1990s. The idea was to invite a dozen or so promising young people from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to get together and exchange ideas and experiences. In Macao in 1992, He Dongsheng was a mainland delegate and I was a Taiwanese delegate. He Dongsheng was just a young scholar at that time and didn’t give us the impression that he was particularly outstanding, but then later he became a high-ranking official in the Communist Party.
We all raised our glasses to each other, and after that we watched the film. Nobody said a word throughout the entire thing except once when Jian Lin commented, “The woman playing the mother-in-law of the counterrevolutionary was really very young at the time. You can still see her quite often these days on TV.”
During the screening, I took a look at He Dongsheng. He seemed to have fallen asleep. Jian Lin was very
Ah Yuan is the largest collector of Burgundy in Taiwan. When the global economy hit the skids, Ah Yuan’s wealth shrunk, but his Burgundy collection was still intact. I had never asked Ah Yuan for anything before, but this time I asked him to give me two bottles of good Burgundy. He gladly told me to take a few more bottles, but I declined because of customs duties. I took just two bottles, one white wine and one red.
I sent Jian Lin a short message asking him what was showing the following Sunday. I told him I was bringing a Bâtard-Montrachet 1989 and a Romanée-Conti 1999.
When I took the two bottles over to the restaurant, there weren’t any other guests, just me and Jian Lin. He carefully examined them, exclaiming, “Great wine, great wine … Let’s open it and let it breathe.”
“What’s on tonight?” I asked while he gently poured the red wine into a crystal decanter.
It was the 1964 film
Never Forget Class Struggle,
directed by Xie Tieli. “Have you ever seen it?” he asked.
“Are you kidding? If I’d seen it, Chiang Kai-shek would have had me shot.”
“Those were good times, 1964,” Jian Lin said.“The Three Years Natural Disaster was over, people’s living conditions were beginning to recover, and the Cultural Revolution had not yet started. But in 1959 Old Mao was unhappy. He had nothing to do after resigning his post as National Chairman, so he put out the slogan ‘Never forget the class struggle.’ And this film responded to his call to remind the masses never to forget that there were still class enemies concealed among the people. It was advance notice of the coming Four Cleanups Movement to cleanse politics, the economy, Party organization, and ideology. It was also a prelude to the Cultural Revolution.”
“I’ve invited my cousin to watch the film and taste your wine,” Jian later said as we were eating.
I didn’t remember ever meeting his cousin and I wasn’t particularly happy about sharing my expensive wine with someone I didn’t know.
Just then a rather stern and pale-faced man with sparse hair came in and greeted Jian Lin as “Elder Brother.”
“This is my cousin, Dongsheng. This is my good friend from Taiwan, Lao Chen.”
“He Dongsheng, we’ve met before,” I said as we shook hands. “It was at the Macao session of the Prosperous China Conference in 1992; you were the representative from Fudan University.”
“Yes, yes,” He Dongsheng said softly.
Jian Lin looked puzzled. “Do you two know each other?”
“Yes, yes,” He Dongsheng repeated.
We all felt a little awkward. “We met twenty years ago,” I said.
A wealthy Taiwanese named Shui Xinghua—meaning “prosperous China”—had set up a foundation that held four Xinghua, or Prosperous China, conferences in the early 1990s. The idea was to invite a dozen or so promising young people from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to get together and exchange ideas and experiences. In Macao in 1992, He Dongsheng was a mainland delegate and I was a Taiwanese delegate. He Dongsheng was just a young scholar at that time and didn’t give us the impression that he was particularly outstanding, but then later he became a high-ranking official in the Communist Party.
We all raised our glasses to each other, and after that we watched the film. Nobody said a word throughout the entire thing except once when Jian Lin commented, “The woman playing the mother-in-law of the counterrevolutionary was really very young at the time. You can still see her quite often these days on TV.”
During the screening, I took a look at He Dongsheng. He seemed to have fallen asleep. Jian Lin was very
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