The most important aim of this meeting was to sort out lines of communication between our personnel and apportion responsibility: Chen Erhu became the deputy head of our working group and head of the cryptanalysis section, with Comrade Yang to assist him; Huang Yiyi was also allocated an assistant, a young woman called Comrade Zha. Apart from that we all got to share a secretary, Comrade Fei, who would also play the role of office manager, making sure that the bosses’ decisions were reported to the workforce and the workforce’s results got passed up: he would have responsibility for the day-to-day running of our working group. These were all people I had hand-picked from different government organizations, and they shared a high level of revolutionary consciousness, a strong professional attitude to their work, and an uncomplicated family background. This was particularly true of Comrade Zha, who was, like me, a revolutionary orphan, who had grown up in Unit 701. She was a very simple and naïve young woman but also very committed. She seemed to me to be the very best person to act as Huang Yiyi’s assistant.

After the meeting was over, since Huang Yiyi still hadn’t come to work, I sent Comrade Zha to look for her and find out what she was up to. Well, Comrade Zha found that she had become enamoured of a squirrel and had run off into the forest to play with it! When Comrade Zha dragged her back, I caught sight of her through the window carrying a large red Russian-style backpack, looking from left to right as she walked along the road, for all the world as if she were a tourist admiring the scenery. I couldn’t stop myself from getting angry. When she came in I started to criticize her. ‘You’re coming to work just as everyone else is getting ready to leave. This really is too late!’

She said that she was busy and that she had asked me for the day off, having slipped the note under my door.

I said, ‘In future if you want the day off, let Comrade Zha know: she is your assistant.’

When she heard that little Comrade Zha was a revolutionary orphan, she said crossly, ‘Why is it that everyone I meet nowadays is a revolutionary orphan – is it because you think I am not revolutionary enough? So you send these people to instruct and reform me. But I am not going to change – do you understand that?’

‘No one is going to reform anyone else,’ I said, ‘but you shouldn’t go out of your way to make other people unhappy. Today was the first meeting of our working group and you didn’t turn up. Don’t do that again.’

‘The same applies to you. When you get home, have a look on the doorstep – you never know, there might be a letter from me requesting the day off …’