This all happened twelve years ago. In those days I was a young man, not even thirty years of age, and I was doing a very ordinary job at my work unit, whereby when I went on business trips I didn’t even get to fly. However, there was this one time when my boss went to Beijing to report to his senior managers. The report we had produced was nicely printed out and when my boss leafed through it he must have decided that I did not need to go in person. But then all of a sudden the senior managers changed their minds about what they wanted a report on and my boss started to panic; he demanded that I fly to Beijing immediately to produce a new report on the spot. That was how I got to fly for the first time in my life. Just as the poet says, ‘Availing myself of the possibilities of space’, I arrived in Beijing in less than two hours. My boss was only a junior manager so when he came to the airport to pick me up it was not just a matter of politeness; he also wanted me to ‘hit the ground running’. However, having just made my way out of the airport and said hello to the boss, two policemen walked across and stood between us. They didn’t ask any questions but demanded that I go with them. I asked why, and they said that I would find out when I went with them. They then started to drag me off. My wretched boss was in an even worse state than I was! He asked me what on earth was going on, but how was I to know? I was sure that them taking me away was some sort of mistake. The two policemen asked me my name, and I told them it was Mai Jia. My parents picked this name for me partly because they were not educated and partly out of humility; perhaps they were hoping that I would be a humble person. Mai Jia is a peasant’s name, really ordinary and everyday.