Jan Wong faces haunted past in new book
Jan Wong is a lot larger in print than she is in real life. Currently a feature writer for the Globe and Mail Wong has written for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal . She was there for the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing acting as the correspondent for the Globe . She was almost kidnapped by Chinese police and has gone undercover as a maid in Toronto. She was also one of the first foreigners to attend Beijing University during the Cultural Revolution in China and was a committed Maoist. Sitting in a coffee shop in Calgary she almost seems meek. However she is talkative.
Calgary was the last stop on a publicity tour for Wong’s latest book Beijing Confidential: A Tale of Comrades Lost and Found (Doubleday Canada 336 pp.). Part confessional part history of the city and part guide to the changing face of Beijing during an unprecedented economic boom the book is descriptive illuminating funny and troubling.
While studying at Beijing University when she was 20 Wong was introduced to a young woman who she calls Yin. Yin wanted to go to America. As a true believer in Chairman Mao and his revolution Wong did what she thought was right at the time: she turned Yin in as a traitor. Years later Wong returns to Beijing to describe its changing face and to find one woman in 1.6 billion who may not have survived her treachery.
“I was supposed to write about Beijing that was what the publisher asked me to do and I secretly thought it was a really good chance to find her. I didn’t tell the publisher because I didn’t think I would find her” explains Wong. “The reason I decided to write about it…. It’s like the Maoist self-criticism. I realized that if I’d just found her and said ‘sorry’ and then we have dinner and I go shopping it’s not enough.
“I felt that by forcing myself to write this I had to examine my motivations the context the impact on her life” she adds.
The story Wong tells of Beijing is woven into the story of amends and forgiveness that she is seeking. Her search takes her to her old university and puts her in touch with long lost friends and adversaries; people who just want to forget the past and get on with it much like the city they inhabit. For Wong it was a time to reflect. “I was a pretty fervent wannabe Maoist and I say wannabe because I didn’t understand all the implications of what I was doing. I only saw glimpses of the dark side and I rationalized it. I still wanted to think this was the best thing to do” she says. “I really wanted to belong to the group I wanted to be accepted. I did everything I could to get rid of my old bourgeois western self and become Chinese.”
Wong knows Beijing or at least she used to. The city is undergoing massive changes with entire neighbourhoods being wiped out new expressways being built condos popping up where once there were traditional homes and new Olympic complexes and an airport being built in record time.
For Wong the most troubling part was the pollution. “It’s unlivable the city is unlivable. They don’t have water… there’s this tremendous use of water in Beijing they keep building golf courses in an arid climate. So the water is really stressed. And then the air pollution you can’t imagine it” she says.
Wong points out the window on a low cloudy day in Calgary and says the air looks like that only there is no light getting through and it’s not cloud. “You can’t see more than a block away.”
Yet Wong has hope for a new China and still seems to carry some of the old Maoist beliefs around with her even while she sips a latte in Kensington. She believes that the government will be able to force quick change when it decides to do so. “They can do a lot of good things and they can do a lot of bad things. With totalitarianism you can build a subway if you want it” she says.
Beijing Confidential is rich with a sense of change and puts you in the city during the 1970s while it is being destroyed and reshaped. And if you want to find out more about the reshaping of modern Beijing and its culture (not to mention why Wong thinks donkey penis tastes better than Spam) it’s worth the read.
