Chou Chet (Si), party secretary in the western zone, was a fifty-three-year-old revolutionary who had worked with Pol Pot in Phnom Penh in the 1950s but had escaped the purges of 1976. In late 1977, he was recovering from a series of illnesses, perhaps related to his fear of being purged, when Brother Number One showed up at his office in Kompong Chhnang. As Chet recalled in his confession, Pol Pot told him that

Ta Chai [Chen Yongguil was going to come on a tour soon. I was asked to arrange for him to tour Kompong Chhnang.... When I heard that Ta Chai was going to come to tour my zone, it was an honor to receive him, so I worked day and night, going everywhere. When I received [Chen Yonggui] I was ecstatic, and forgot to think about Brother Number One, [Vorn Vet] and [Ieng Sary]. I walked right up in the front row, even in front of Brother Number One. The words I spoke were not appropriate for a revolutionary leader. They were not diplomatic.... As soon as Ta Chai had gone down to look at the paddy while he was still worn out from his train trip I nevertheless immediately requested his friendly advice. At that point, Brother Number One laughed.8

The scene Chou Chet described might have come straight from the pages of Democratic Kampuchea Is Moving Forward. The morning of December 10, the cortege carrying the Chinese visitors, Pol Pot, and other high-ranking party figures pulled into the Phnom Popok cooperative in Kompong Chhnang after traveling less than 10 kilometers from the nearby railroad station at Romeas. Parked alongside the sedans bearing the guests and high officials was a Chinese-made truck (or perhaps a pair of jeeps)—its cargo of security guards was already deployed around the site. The top cadre from the zone, in laundered peasant costumes and neatly knotted cotton scarves (krama) had been standing around for several hours. The work site and the well-fed, smiling workers had been chosen and cleaned up in advance. The nearby plot of Chou Chet would have been of high quality, close packed, and golden, filling a squared-off 1-hectare plot. Soon after the visitors arrived, the workers were to thresh the paddy in a Dazhai-style storming attack, perhaps to the rhythm of a revolutionary song. Everyone waited for a few words from Pol Pot and “Ta Chai” to set the tableau in motion. Instead, they were treated to a ragged, impromptu performance by Chou Chet as the middle-aged revolutionary, overwhelmed by the presence of a vice premier of China—and perhaps scared witless by Pol Pot—broke in, chattering and stumbling over himself and causing Pol Pot to laugh indulgently.9