‘I think she’s a classic idiot savant. She’s obviously brilliant, but in some ways can hardly look after herself, because it seems she can’t control her own thoughts and actions. She’s always far too self-willed in what she says and does; far too unrestrained and independent. As a result she’s always getting into fights, and some people have criticized her for being too bourgeois.’ He looked at me and added, ‘But then, who on this earth is perfect? Everybody has some shortcomings. She did live for years in the States, so of course her way of thinking has been affected by that. We need to reform her, but we also need to understand her. I do understand her, and I keep trying to persuade her that when in Rome she has to do as the Romans do. Her real problem is that she can’t, or perhaps it would be fairer to say that she’s not very good at it. But I think that in the end she will learn to fit in.’

I was wondering why, if her work really was that good, he hadn’t recommended her. I asked him, and he laughed. ‘You’ve met her, and you think she’d do? As you said, the woman’s crazy!’

I thought, yes, how could we choose someone like her? Fundamentally she was just a clever bourgeois element.

As I left the Party secretary’s office I put Huang Yiyi to the back of my mind, but it wasn’t that easy. Her appearance, her voice, her words, her movements as she danced, came flying in front of my eyes like a persistent bluebottle. The thing is that the Party secretary’s praise had aroused my curiosity, particularly as I realized that someone like that in your work unit must cause a lot of headaches. I hadn’t expected him to say such nice things, which meant that her work must be absolutely brilliant. A crazy woman but an exceptional scholar: I thought she was awful but some people clearly liked her, like the woman running the coffee shop … She obviously wasn’t just wild with nothing else to recommend her, and should not be lightly dismissed. I thought that it would be interesting to see her again, but then I remembered that I had put her in an awkward position the night before (walking out without saying goodbye), and if I now went to find her, for all I knew she’d just make fun of me. And of course she wouldn’t be suitable for us – after all we were a special unit with particularly strict regulations, so only people whose behaviour and moral qualities were above question could work for us. Thinking like that, I finally let go of her.