Chapter 183 Postscript demon

I started researching Dai Li and Kuomintang agents more than ten years ago.During those years I often couldn't help asking myself: Why did you spend so much energy investigating a character who is so varied?If Dai Li wasn't completely evil, then at best he was cunning and ambiguous.People can admire his courage and ability, or show respect for his ability to deal with Chiang Kai-shek's unpredictable political shoals and win the admiration of his subordinates.But, morally, he was always a man of ambiguity—a mystery even to the "Chairman" himself. Is it mere curiosity that keeps me so engrossed?Observing Dai Li with the eyes of his contemporaries is like observing a cobra from a room away.Gradually, I realized that I was indirectly confronting a force, a demon, who, like certain Taoist mages, was and is able to manage the civil strife characteristic of Chinese society.

This again made me realize that so much of my attention to Chinese history was all about showing, understanding and resisting the deceptive power of the snake's eye. "Social unrest", "conflict and control", "reconstruction of the imperial system" and "administration of Shanghai", Chairman Mao's grand will - the choice of these propositions seems reasonable to me at the moment.For reasons not quite clear to myself, describing the gaze of the serpent gave me the illusion that I was wrestling with it. It can be said that I am probably one of Dai Li's unintentional prey in the end.Of course, my whim in this safe situation means that by describing Dai Li, I can somehow imagine myself resisting the demon's indifferent gaze.Historians often use this to quell their distant nightmares and suppress the horrors of the past.But can we sit back and relax from now on?