“Is that not a bit too much of an ‘individual’ concept for a communist system?” Margaret slid her Castle across the back line.

“You must not give way to that bad American habit, Dr. Campbell, of intolerance for other ideas. One must always be pragmatic. I was a committed Marxist myself as a young man. Now I am, I guess, a liberal. We all evolve.”

“Didn’t someone once say if you are not a Marxist at twenty you have no heart, and if you are not a conservative at sixty you have no brain?”

He smiled with delight. “I had not heard that one. It is very clever.”

“Very paraphrased, I think. I don’t know where it comes from.”

“The words are unimportant if the meaning is plain. And a truth is a truth no matter who says it.” One of his Soldiers ate one of her Soldiers.

Li sighed theatrically to signal his impatience, but they both ignored him. Margaret slid her Bishop across the diagonal, eating one of Old Yifu’s Soldiers and threatening his forward Horse. He was forced into a defensive move, conceding the initiative to her. “Li Yan told me you were imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution,” she said.

“Did he?”

To her disappointment, Old Yifu seemed disinclined to talk about it. “For three years, Li Yan said.”

“He says a lot, it seems.”

There was no eye contact during this. Both were focused on the board, contemplating the next move, sliding a piece here, jumping the river there.

“You must have been very bitter.”

He ate her Bishop. “Why?”

“You lost three years of your life.” She swooped on the offending Horse and left his Castle wide open to attack. Again he was forced on to the defensive.

“No. I learned much about human nature. I learned even more about myself. Sometimes learning can be a difficult, even painful, process. But one should never resent it.” He thought carefully before blocking the line to his Castle with his King’s Guide. “Besides, I was only in prison for one and a half years.”

“You always told me three,” said Li, taken aback.

“I was physically there for three years. But for half that time I slept, and when I slept I dreamed, and when I dreamed they could not keep me there. Because in my dreams I was free. Free to visit my childhood and speak again to my parents, free to go to the places I have loved in my life: the high mountains of Tibet, the Yellow Sea washing on the shores of Jiangsu, the Hong Kong of my boyhood, with the sun setting blood red across the South China Sea. They can never touch those things, or take them away. And as long as you have them, you have your freedom.”