"Where are you going, Mr. Paul?''For a walk.'Mr. Fang conferred with his Hothot deputy. My walk was given official sanction, and I was driven about a hundred yards to the People's Park and released."

"I could tell he was worried by what I would ask to do next. I spent the rest of the day trying to elude him and his deputy, and at last, in the market, I succeeded. It was late in the afternoon. We were all (Mr. Fang, his deputy, the driver and I) admiring a stack of vegetables, and when I saw they were transfixed by a shaggy mound of blue cabbages I slipped away."

"Xian was one of the few exceptions I found. It was genuinely interesting and pretty, and rather a stately and dignified place"

"He had been sent to nanny me and breathe down my neck. He had been discreet-he had not gotten in my way; but who had asked him to come? Not me."

"Using an extremely clever if somewhat fanciful Chinese technique for ensnaring awkward visitors, they insisted that I was too important to travel alone and so stuck me with Mr. Fang."

"Transportation in China is always crowded; it is nearly always uncomfortable; it is often a struggle."

"Primeval forest,' he said. 'Original forest.''Wouldn't you like to build a house here and live alone with your wife?''Yes,' he said. 'Have a family and write something-poems and stories.''Maybe have four children.''It is not permitted,' he said. Then he smiled. 'But this is so far they wouldn't know. It wouldn't matter. Yes, I would like that."

"the predominating characteristic of the Chinese was stoicism"

"Most intellectuals were sent into the countryside-to farms and into the mountains. They went to the most backward provinces, like Qinghai, Ningxia and Gansu. And Mongolia. Lots of intellectuals ended up in Mongolia. They had to suffer."

"When I considered that it was still illegal for a foreigner to talk at random with any Chinese citizen-the old rule was seldom enforced, but it was a well-known rule nonetheless-I was grateful for this frankness. The healthiest sign in China was this straight talk."