Beijing Confidential

Book excerpt: Jan Wong has returned to Beijing. Her quest: to find someone she encountered briefly in 1973, and whose life she was certain she had ruined forever. In the early 1970s Jan Wong became one of only two Westerners permitted to study at Beijing University. One day a young stranger, Yin Luoyi, asked for help in getting to America. Wong, then a starry-eyed Maoist, immediately reported her to the authorities, and Yin disappeared. Wong chronicled that brief meeting in her bestselling book Red China Blues. Now, a decade after Red China Blues and thirty-four years after that fateful encounter, Jan Wong revisits the Chinese capital to begin her search for the woman who has haunted her conscience. She wants to apologize, to somehow make amends. At the very least she wants to discover whether Yin survived. Emotionally powerful and rich with detail, Beijing Confidential weaves together three distinct stories—Wong’s journey from remorse to redemption, Yin’s journey from disgrace to respectability, and Beijing’s stunning journey from communism to capitalism.