Chapter 6 Part 1 - An Insomniac State Leader in the Near Future

In the past one or two years, except for Chinese New Year holidays, I would have a light meal, drink red wine and watch old movies with Jian Lin at his company's small clubhouse on the first Sunday night of every month.Jian Lin is the owner of Yandu BOBO Real Estate Company. He is the third senior. He resumed the college entrance examination in 1978 and went to university. Complex, as a Confucian businessman, loves to talk about national affairs, writes some ancient poems during the New Year, and sends text messages to clients and friends. In 2008, the company was supposed to go public, but when it encountered the financial crisis, the listing failed, the capital chain was broken, and it almost went bankrupt and was acquired by mergers and acquisitions. Somehow, it was twisted by him, and now it is alive and well again.He is a workaholic, but he started a new habit two years ago, which is to have a light meal with his family and friends and watch an old movie every Sunday night.At the beginning, many people coaxed him to watch it together, but gradually, his family members did not accompany him, and friends had to choose whether to attend the show or not. In winter, it was often just Jian Lin and me.Since a friend took me there, I have to come every month. Firstly, I am free, secondly, I live close to each other, and thirdly, I am really interested in watching old movies from mainland China after 1949, because I used to be in Hong Kong. , Taiwan have not seen, a bit fresh.I was the only one who was not absent, and I had no interest in him, and I had nothing to ask of him, and he was not wary of me, because I was an unimportant person, suitable for being a social friend.When there are few people, especially in winter when there are only two people, he will take out a bottle of good wine, all of which are 82, 85, and 89 first-tier Bordeaux, and drink it for two people, sometimes two bottles a night.People in Taiwan drink good red wine 15 years earlier than those in mainland China. I can agree with him, appreciate his wine, and I am willing to listen to him show off the wine experience I read in books.He finds the ideal drinking buddy.When there are many people, I think he is also quite stingy, and he only brings some very ordinary wine for everyone to drink.This made me more sure of my worth.

The only feeling I don't like is that I can't ask him back, that makes me look like a freelance literati, why should I? Every time he made me drink Bordeaux, never Burgundy.After reading information on the Internet, I chatted with him about Burgundy, and found that he was very interested, but obviously not familiar with it.So I made up my mind. When I returned to Taipei during the Chinese New Year, I went to my middle school classmate A Yuan and asked him for two bottles of Burgundy. A Yuan's electronics factory in Hsinchu once made a large share of scanned parts in the world, and he may also be the largest Burgundy collector in Taiwan, comparable to Wu Yi in Macau and Tang Jiyuan in Hong Kong.After the world economy entered a period of ice and fire, A Yuan's wealth shrank, but it still did not affect his Burgundy reserves.I have never asked A Yuan for a favor, but this time I told him to give me two bottles of the best Burgundy.A Yuan said happily, take a few more bottles.I said: No, I have to go through customs and I don't want to declare taxes.Take only one bottle of white and one bottle of red.

I sent a text message to Jian Lin, asking if there is any show on Sunday?I would take Batard Montrachet 1989 and Romanee-Conti 1999. On Sunday, I took two bottles of wine to the small club, and sure enough there were no other guests, just me and Jianlin.He took the wine I brought, looked around, and even said good wine, good wine.He said, open it first and let it breathe. When he gently poured the wine into the crystal bottle, I asked him what play to watch tonight?He said it was "Never Forget", produced in 1964, and asked me if I had seen it.I said: "Nonsense, Lao Jiang will kill me if I read it." Jian Lin said: It was a good year. After three years of disasters, people's livelihood began to recover, and the Cultural Revolution had not yet started. After retiring from his seat, unwilling to be lonely, he put forward the slogan "Never forget class struggle". It also heralded the Cultural Revolution.

When we were having a simple meal, Jian Lin said, I called my cousin to watch the show and let him try your good wine. I don't remember seeing his cousin, and was a bit reluctant to let him drink my good wine. At this time, a man with a pale face and thinning hair came in and asked Jian Lin to be his brother. Jian Lin said: "My cousin, Dong Sheng. My good friend from Taiwan, Lao Chen." When we shook hands, I said: "He Dongsheng, we met. We participated in the Xinghua Camp in Macau in 1992. At that time you were teaching in Fudan." He Dongsheng said softly: "Yes, yes."

Jian Lin was a little puzzled and asked, "Do you know each other?" He Dongsheng still said: "Yes, yes". I found that everyone was a little embarrassed, so I just said, "I haven't seen you for twenty years." In the early 1990s, the Foundation of Hsin-Hsing Hshui, a rich man from other provinces in Taiwan, held four Hsing Hwa Camps, selecting dozens of young elites from both sides of the Taiwan Strait and three regions every year, and letting them spend a few days together and communicate with each other.When it was held in Macau, He Dongsheng was a member of the mainland group, and I was a member of the Taiwan group.At that time, He Dongsheng was just a young scholar, and he didn't give people the impression that he was very good. Now he is a senior official of the Communist Party of China.

We drank, Jian Lin asked He Dongsheng: "Is this wine okay?" He Dongsheng said vaguely. Jian Lin said: "Old Chen specially brought it from Taiwan." He Dongsheng toasted me a little feebly, and I toasted to him a little too. Then the movie was shown, and the audience was silent, only once Jian Lin told me that the actor who played the villain's mother-in-law was actually very young at the time, and now she is often seen acting in new TV dramas. In the middle of watching the play, I glanced at He Dongsheng. He seemed to be asleep, but Jian Lin was watching it seriously. I thought to myself: Jian Lin really loves watching these red classic old movies.

"Never Forget" is about an electric motor factory in Northeast China. The workers are very motivated, but one of the young workers married a wife from a petty bourgeois family background. Material 148, the young worker’s mother-in-law even instigated her son-in-law to hunt wild ducks during his vacation, and then handed her over to sell them on the black market, so that absenteeism almost caused a major accident and harmed the interests of the country. class struggle.At the end of the play, there are six blood-red characters printed in the last scene: Don't forget. I said, "That's right, it's interesting, but when the younger generation reads it in the future, I'm afraid it's hard to understand, and someone needs to be there to explain it."

He Dongsheng suddenly said: "It is easy to manage eight hours of work, but it is difficult to manage after eight hours. Lao Mao has not solved this problem." I was a little surprised that He Dongsheng called Lao Mao directly. He continued: "Did you know that after the reform and opening up, there was a magazine in Tianjin called "Beyond Eight Hours"? Eight hours is work, and the other eight hours is leisure. Everyone doesn't know how to relax. After the socialist transformation, eight hours, but it is There is no way to control it beyond eight hours..." "Let's leave it to capitalism after eight hours," Jian Lin interjected.

Alcohol may have some effect, He Dongsheng continued: "Isn't it! You old Mao can't tell people to arrest the revolution and promote production 24 hours a day, you have to let them go home, eat something delicious, buy some beautiful clothes to wear, and do something. Petty bourgeois stuff. If the people want this, you can’t deny it. If you don’t give it to someone to work for you? It’s just a good life, it’s not too much! They need to work for eight hours, and they should be happy after eight hours.” The officials I usually know speak official clichés, but He Dongsheng's words sound like ordinary people's.

I have a lot of affection for him. After expressing his opinion, he was like a deflated rubber ball, drinking in a slump.We were all drinking. After a while, Jian Lin said again: Good wine, good wine! He continued: "It's better now than before. It was good just now, and it's even better now. The wine is completely sober. You see, we drink a sip of white and a sip of red, and it's still so good." Everyone was silent again.I thought that He Dongsheng would leave after the play, but who knew that he was sitting all the time, we accompanied him, not talking, He Dongsheng didn't touch the wine and snacks on the table, he just drank slowly.Jian Lin took out a big cigar, but no one wanted it, and Jian Lin was too embarrassed to smoke it.

Drinking all the bottle and cup, Jian Lin put on the big red robe again, He Dongsheng didn't touch it, as if he didn't need to drink water.It was almost midnight when He Dongsheng got up and went to the toilet. Jian Lin told me softly: "He suffers from insomnia at night and doesn't need to sleep. I'm afraid he'll sit all the time. I can't stand it anymore. Now I go to bed early and get up early." "I also go to bed early, afraid of staying up late."I thought about Ho Tung Sang falling asleep while watching the drama. When He Dongsheng came out of the toilet, he said to me, "How about I take you back with me?" I said "no, I'm close, I'll walk back".Unnecessarily, I asked, "Is the driver there?" I forgot that he was a high-ranking official, so of course the driver was there. Who knows that he said: "I drive by myself at night, I like to drive, sometimes drive until dawn, and take a nap in the car when I am tired."He seemed to feel that he had talked too much, so he vaguely said "Let's go" and left. I regret not letting He Dongsheng take me back. Actually, it’s not that close. I would walk back during the day, but at this late hour, I still need to take a taxi.Jian Lin lived nearby, on the top floor of another building in this community. "It's been a long time since we saw each other. He's busy. I met at my aunt's memorial service a while ago, and I just thought of calling him," Jian Lin explained. I asked: "You are cousins, your surname is Jane, his surname is He..." "My father and his three brothers, two younger brothers joined the revolution and changed their surnames. Dongsheng's original surname is Jian." I understand that it is not uncommon for the second generation of an old revolutionary family to even have two brothers with different surnames. "Another one?" I asked. Jian Lin said: "I have nothing to do with that side." I was embarrassed to ask, and said, "I didn't expect you to be related to He Dongsheng. How high is he now?" Jian Lin said: "How high is an official? Now he is a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, but in this term he is a veteran of the three dynasties. It is not easy." I asked, "Does that count as a national leader?" Jian Lin said: "Strictly speaking, it should be called the party and state leaders. On the party side, from the secretary of the secretariat to the top, they are the party and state leaders. Of course, it goes without saying that the members of the Politburo." "Wow! Speaking of which, I have met two national leaders up close. One is your cousin He Dongsheng, and the other is Dong Chee-hwa, vice chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference." The national leaders all comb their heads back, with jet-black hair, rosy complexion, and full of energy. I did not expect to meet a national leader with thinning hair, pale complexion, and insomnia.