The Man on Mao's Right
by Ji Chaozhu
Random House, HK$224
Ji Chaozhu was the ultimate 'fly on the wall' during some of the most extraordinary events in modern Chinese history. From the early 1950s to his retirement in 1996, he was interpreter for Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong and other top mainland politicians and eventually a fully accredited diplomat.
Consequently he was privy to many extraordinary conversations but this is not a 'kiss-and-tell' book: there are no shocking revelations or untold gossip being revealed for the first time. He takes a veiled shot at Li Zhisui's The Private Life of Chairman Mao, published in 1994 and representing events Mao's private physician is supposed to have witnessed. This book, Ji assures us, does not contain any salacious stories about China's revolutionary leaders.
And he is true to his word. He makes it clear that he is not writing history; all he is doing is telling his personal story but it is an interesting story indeed. What makes Ji special is his upbringing. At 10 he was whisked away from his war-ravaged home in China and taken to America. Not only did Ji spend his adolescence in America, he lost a great deal of his ability to speak Chinese. He was, however, very bright and entered Harvard, where he studied for two years before his family decided the Korean war was making life too difficult for them, so they returned to China.
Back home, he was half-American, half-Chinese. Although this made it possible for him to become a brilliant interpreter - his spoken Chinese returned in time although writing took longer - it also made him somewhat 'impure' in the eyes of some of the dedicated revolutionaries then running China. He did eventually become the main interpreter for Zhou and held that position for nearly 20 years. As he tells his story one sees glimpses of the wider world, both in Chinese politics and from the world stage.