When the meeting was over, it was my intention to take Huang Yiyi to the calculations division, the analysis division and the cryptography division to have a look, so that she could familiarize herself with conditions here. But she was in a listless mood and didn’t want to go; she wanted me to take her for a walk around the unit. So I took her all round, which I guess counts as letting her get to know the place. I discovered that with practically every step we took, there was a pair of curious eyes weighing us up, as if they had just seen something unusual or discovered a secret. She became really cheerful, looking at this and asking questions about that – if she saw a pretty flower then she wanted to pick it, if she saw a pretty bird she wanted to run after it. In that manner we wandered out of the strictly guarded work area into the living area outside it, and finally we ended up in the guards’ little compound. There was a vast magnolia tree in the middle of the compound, which was completely covered in white flowers. The moment Huang Yiyi caught sight of the tree with all its flowers and buds, she emitted an excited squeak. There was a concrete ping-pong table under the tree, and a load of soldiers were standing around watching a game of elephant chess. When they noticed us, they all looked up and gawped at Huang Yiyi. Bureau Chief Yuan of the guards unit saw that Huang Yiyi really liked the magnolia and told one of the guards to climb the tree to pick some flowers for her. The soldier was just about to get up into the tree when Huang Yiyi stopped him. She was looking at the interrupted game laid out on the ping-pong table, and asked which one of them was the best player. They all said it was Comrade Zhang, the clerk in their office. Huang Yiyi said to Bureau Chief Yuan, ‘I don’t want a reward I haven’t earned. I’ll play a game of elephant chess with the best player you have, and if he loses then you have to send someone up into the tree to pick flowers for me, OK? If I lose, I’ll climb the tree myself.’

Of course, the Bureau Chief agreed.

Huang Yiyi walked up to the ping-pong table and slapped down her chariots, horses and cannons, and then told Comrade Zhang that he could go first. The soldiers all looked at her in stupefaction. But what surprised them even more was that she put down her pieces really quickly, moving her delicate hands all over the board at a speed that made us dizzy, almost as if she wasn’t thinking about it at all. Nevertheless she beat Comrade Zhang in no time at all. Then someone went up into the tree and picked an armful of magnolia flowers for her.