ORVILLE Schell looks old for a man of 54. His hair is a shock of white, his face is heavily lined.
It could be the care and love he puts into his writing that makes him like this. Or then again it could be from trying to entertain his two young children aged three and one.
But his deep-set eyes are quick and lively. Writing about China for 30 years has made him wary of traps and he did not blunder into the one I set for him.
One of the most startling passages in his latest book, Mandate of Heaven, is his description of the brief but verbally brutal questioning he and his Bejing-born wife went through in the dark days of 1991, the days before the boom.
Schell was scheduled to give a talk to the Beijing Foreign Correspondents Club on the 'silence of Chinese intellectuals'. But before he could make it he was hauled in for questioning and the talk was cancelled.
So how does a man with relatives in China still find the freedom to speak his mind, knowing what the consequences could be? 'It is tricky,' he said, immediately on his guard. 'I feel pressure now if I am talking to you. But I have written about China long enough to know the correct line today is the incorrect line tomorrow. It is a perilous course to try and say anything but that which you believe in.' He was saved from further disclosure by his wife arriving. 'Steve has cleverly picked up on the passage about the questioning,' he said, as he introduced me. 'I think it would be better if we got back to this a little later.' We never did.