In the end Zhang Guoqing’s wife lost her job and had to take the boy back to their home town. There were two things that saved Zhang Guoqing. One was that he was a Party member, and there’s the saying, ‘Losing Party membership takes three years off’. That means that in return for being stripped of Party membership, you could avoid a prison sentence of three years or less. The other reason was that he was a confidential documents courier, with very high security clearance, and there was no way that he could be allowed to return to civilian life. Just because we wanted to fire him doesn’t mean that we could. So he kept his job, but had to leave the confidential documents division and go and work for the communications section. His rank within the Party was then reduced from level 21 right down to the very lowest grade: 24. There actually was no such thing as a level 24 cadre in the national Party structure, the lowest was actually 23: level 24 was a grade operated by work units themselves. The first year after applying for Party membership, or the first year after graduating from university, you’d be treated as a so-called level 24 cadre, kind of like getting you ready to be a Party member. If during that year you didn’t do anything wrong, you’d be formally enrolled.

Some people said that the punishment meted out to Zhang Guoqing’s wife was too heavy – and it was true, she was punished because he couldn’t be. She suffered for the sake of her husband and child; it was her duty, and she didn’t complain. She didn’t complain, and of course there was no way that the Party was going to revise the verdict, and no one was expecting Huang Yiyi to come out and ask for mercy on their behalf. I asked her why she wanted to do this and she said something vague about feeling sorry for them; that it was unfair that the lives of three people should be wrecked because a seven-year-old child did something wrong.

‘Comrade Wang doesn’t have a fun life either.’

I had been expecting her to ‘redeem’ Comrade Wang, because after all she was involved in what happened to him, and she had made me promise. Instead she took my pawn with her queen.

‘Well, if you would sort things out for both Comrade Wang and Zhang Guoqing, that would be wonderful.’

‘I meant to deal with Comrade Wang first.’

‘No. If we have to prioritize, then Zhang Guoqing comes first.’

‘Why?’

‘No reason.’