On 25 October 2002 I was witness to the very peculiar way in which information was released on Declassification Day. Beginning at 08.30 and continuing throughout the day, people walked up to the record clerk’s office counter, produced a notification form, accepted a file folder from the clerk, and left. It was just like the workings of a post office, except that the exchange between the clerk and the person requesting such-and-such a file revealed much more good will, friendliness even – something you don’t often see in a post office. At any rate, during the comings and goings of these people, I did notice one particular man amble in, supporting himself on a cane. He didn’t seem all that old, actually, perhaps around fifty or so; the age of an administrator of some sort or other. However, two years before I met the man, he had been unlucky enough to contract a serious eye infection that gradually destroyed his eyesight. No matter what the doctors attempted, nothing seemed to work. The world now appeared to him as completely blank, forcing him to use a cane to get around. Of course, work was out of the question, and his blindness was the main reason he had left active duty at Unit 701. Well, leaving doesn’t really describe his retirement. After all, when he ‘left’ Unit 701, he was, in a sense, abandoning his youth, his skills, his friends, his comrades, his correspondence over the twelve years of his service, his diaries, and all sorts of other papers and notes – everything; his whole life. All of it remained within the compound’s walls. Some of these things he would never see again. But some other items, namely his letters and diaries, he could take home with him today. His file had been declassified.

Later, I learnt that he was in fact Chen Erhu’s former aide and confidant, a man by the name of Shi Guoguang. What made me even more excited about meeting him was the fact that in the declassified documents which were handed over that day, there were many letters and diaries that dealt directly with Chen Erhu. This discovery raised my hopes that one day soon Old Chen’s personal file would be made public. But until that day, all I can use to reconstruct and put together the pieces of the life of Old Chen are these letters and notes made by Shi Guoguang.

I do not need to tell you that the depiction of Chen Erhu that you read here is nothing approaching a complete picture of the individual; it’s just a shadow of the man. That’s what I meant by the title of this section: ‘The Shadow of Chen Erhu’. I couldn’t have got this far without the help of his disciple, Shi Guoguang, so I’m very grateful to him and wish him all the best with his recovery.