Lost & Found

Meeting at Anhui Grand Theatre, then off to catch a flight home. I'm so used to China's big & bright new airports that Hefei's rather tatty, tiny one is a surprise. Still, I'm sure they'll have one the size of Gatwick by the time I return. 
Flight was delayed so had time to read Jan Wong's A Comrade Lost & Found. Wong is a Chinese Canadian journalist who, as a self confessed 'starry-eyed Maoist', was one of only two foreigners studying at Beijing University in the early 1970s. During that time she was asked by another student for advice on getting to the US, whereupon Wong - with a zealousness that a Red Guard would have been proud of - promptly shopped her to the authorities and the girl 'disappeared'. The book is an account of how, 33 years later, Wong tried to track her down. It's interesting, but I found the author somewhat self-obsessed and her style irritating.