Once Abing had demonstrated his unique auditory abilities, Bureau Chief Wu took the initiative and contacted the Director to propose that Abing be sent immediately to the radio-listening division to begin work. His proposal had everyone’s full support. Towards the end of it, Bureau Chief Wu gave three particular reasons for putting Abing to work straight away:

1. Although Abing didn’t truly understand Morse code, as the test demonstrated, in his case it didn’t really matter: he could still identify the characters; he was remarkable. If we were to wait for him to actually understand Morse code, that really wouldn’t be putting his exceptional talent to work.
2. In terms of the communication systems for our target country and military: no matter how they might change from time to time, they all had a certain number of shared characteristics as well as certain distinct features. At the moment, we had already identified more than fifty of the enemy’s frequencies (over the previous few days, a pitiful couple of extra frequencies had been added), which essentially meant that we already had our sample for Abing to listen to. Although the sound of the frequencies that the enemy had switched to that we had not yet identified would not be exactly the same as the samples – indeed, for a normal person they would sound totally different – we ought to have faith in the ability of someone like Abing, who was able to distinguish accurately the parentage and sex of anonymous dogs by their barking, to listen through the dense web of airwaves and pick out those frequencies we needed to find.
3. As for Abing’s lack of training with respect to using the equipment, that really wasn’t an issue because we could easily assign him the most proficient technician we had to serve as his assistant, to operate the equipment whilst he listened. After all, it was Abing’s ears that were remarkable, and it was his ears that we needed to use.

I was the only person who didn’t support Bureau Chief Wu’s proposal. What he and the others had said seemed very clear and logical, and nearly persuaded me to swallow my objections. However, because of my reservations, I still felt the need to explain the reasons for my opposition to the proposal. This is what I said: