Riding the Iron Rooster

She was slim and had the severe good looks of a Chinese beauty—skin like pale velvet and a lacquered elegance that fashion magazines call devastating. She had the alert and yet contented air of someone who has had everything she has ever wanted, and probably been given it lavishly rather than having had to demand it. Her jet-black hair was yanked back tightly into a knot and stabbed with a stiletto. She wore a stylish white jacket and skirt, a striped blouse and cruel shoes, and large white coral earrings were snapped against the sides of her head like earphones designed by Fabergé. She was so eager to put me at my ease that I immediately became tense.

In the steamy May heat of Peking, Mrs. Lord was uncommonly energetic. This was her way. Her gusto was a kind of confidence, and she could be hearty in two languages. She was brisk, she laughed loudly and deep in her throat, and she had the very un-Chinese habit of poking my arm, or rapping my knee or hitting my shoulder to get my attention or make a point. These would have been exhausting qualities in another person, but in Mrs. Lord they were stimulating. I liked being poked in the arm by this glamorous woman.

Once, tapping me, she said (speaking of the importance of planning), "It's like choosing the right husband or wife..."

I thought this was odd, because I had never regarded marriage as a conscious choice. It was something else: you fell in love and that was it, for better or worse. But she seemed very rational—that was certainly Chinese of her—and I guessed that she had spent her life making the right choices.

She told me she felt very lucky. I imagined that many women must hate her, since she was what most would want to be—a ravishing overachiever, a little empress in her own right. She told me she was forty-seven. She looked about thirty-five and, because some Chinese faces are unalterable even by time, would probably look that way for a long while.

We talked about publishing. Her career has been blessed—two books, both huge successes. She had been in Peking only six months and had planned to write a new novel. But running the embassy household, doing menus, dealing with servants and guests and family, had turned her into a sort of Victorian housemother. To give herself a sense of order, she said, she was keeping a diary—probably for publication.

"I find myself sitting next to Deng Xiaoping, or being introduced to a visiting head of state, and I think, 'I must write this down!' Don't you think that's important?"

"Yes, but people mainly read diaries to discover trivial things and indiscretions. My advice would be: put everything down, don't edit or censor it, and be as indiscreet as possible."

"Is that what you do?" she said, swiftly crossing her legs and wrapping herself into a querying posture.

"I only keep a diary when I travel," I said. I did not say that I think diaries are death to writing fiction—trying to remember all that stuff.

"Because traveling is so interesting?"

"No. Because travel writing is a minor form of autobiography."

And then a woman entered without knocking to say that the guests had arrived.

"They're all Party members!" Mrs. Lord said confidentially. She was pleased with herself, and who wouldn't be? Out of one billion people, only 44 million are members of the Chinese Communist Party—four and a half percent.

These guests were writers and scholars. Most of them had been abroad and nearly all of them spoke English perfectly. Nor were they daunted by the Western menu—the soup first, and then the prawns and meat loaf—or the knives and forks. Indeed, one of them told me that not long ago Hu Yaobang, the Party secretary, had advocated the use of knives and forks. Chopsticks were unsanitary, Mr. Hu maintained, and the Chinese habit of taking food from common dishes was a factor in the spread of germs. Mr. Hu frequently made mischievous remarks of this kind. He had also said that Marxism was outdated and that the Han Chinese should perhaps vacate Tibet.

I asked the woman next to me whether she agreed with Mr. Hu about chopsticks or anything else.

"I'd like to keep an open mind," she said. Her accent was extraordinary—not just English, but upper-class English, the intonation of a well-bred headmistress. She sounded like the head of Cheltenham Ladies College, and she seemed the sort of woman the English praise by calling her "a bluestocking." I was not surprised to hear that she taught at Peking University or that her chief subject was Henry James.

She said she was exasperated by the bad translations of James into Chinese.

"When Casper Goodwood says to Isabel, 'Just wait!' they translate it as 'Wait a minute'—as if he's going to pop right back, you see. It's very trying, but what can one do?"

I asked her whether the government interfered with her teaching—after all, until recently foreign novels had been regarded as a poisonous bourgeois influence ("sugar-coated bullets").