Excerpted from an unpublished oral record preserved in the files of a certain provincial archive. The recorder had clearly intended it for publication, and had specially inscribed the bound manuscript with a cover title:

Comrade Chen Qianli As I Knew Him (Excerpt)

…In 1979, I made a special trip to the Water Conservancy Bureau and finally met Comrade Chen Qianli. I add the word “finally” here not as mere rhetoric—it truly was difficult to meet him. As for the scene when I finally saw him that day, it could genuinely be called dramatic.

At that time, our Party was in the crucial period of righting the wrongs of the past, and every Chinese face was filled with smiles. So when I first saw him, I cannot say I felt no surprise at all. Because he did not seem particularly warm toward people, and nothing about him showed any trace of the dauntless revolutionary spirit, or the swiftness and wisdom, he had shown in the fight against the enemy during the darkest hour of Nationalist rule.

I had already done a great deal of investigation into that period beforehand, and had read many files on enemy agents seized after Liberation, including oral materials provided by some Nationalist military police and secret agents after they had been thoroughly reformed. But I had never been able to find a photograph of him.

It was only as I read further that I gradually came to realize just how perilous a moment the Communist underground organization had faced at that time. In the span of little more than a month, Chen Qianli and his comrades had not only rooted out a traitor within their ranks and established a secret communication line running from Shanghai, by way of a detour through Guangdong, all the way to Ruijin, but had also successfully rescued an important leader of the Party Central Committee, Comrade Hao Han. What tremendous courage and wisdom that must have taken.

Once I understood this, some of the doubts that had lingered in my mind were finally resolved. For instance—why would these steadfast revolutionary fighters use gambling as a cover when holding their meetings? Or take that bank operation: before the action, Chen Qianli had no absolute certainty of success. If the secret agents had discovered the box contained no gold bars, they would surely have guessed that a switch had been made inside the bank, and had they immediately sealed off the bank, allowing no one and nothing in or out, the situation would have become dangerous. Fortunately, that wavering individual fled on his own, drawing the secret agents off in another direction.

Under such circumstances, why would Chen Qianli have taken such a risk? I understand the reasons completely now. The situation was extremely urgent—there was no possibility of a foolproof plan, and the most important thing was to act immediately. It should be said that in all of those operations, Comrade Chen Qianli carried out his tasks brilliantly. In moments of crisis, relying on a unique wisdom, or perhaps intuition, he led his comrades in defeating the enemy’s schemes again and again. As for luck—yes, there was some of that too. But should not a dialectical materialist recognize that contingency is precisely embedded within necessity?

…When I arrived at the Water Conservancy Bureau, I asked the gatekeeper which office Chen Qianli was in, and went directly to find him. I assumed that once I entered the office and said “I’m looking for Chen Qianli,” he would simply stand up and identify himself. But he was not in his office. A staff member told me he might be in the conference room. When I reached the conference room door and looked in, there was no one inside—the room was empty, with many ropes strung haphazardly overhead, from which freshly written slogans hung, drying.

Seeing no one inside, I called out: “Comrade Chen Qianli.” The window was open; there was only the sound of wind rustling the hanging slogans. I called again: “Is Comrade Chen Qianli here?” Still no one answered. I guessed there was no one inside, but couldn’t help wanting to step in and take a closer look. It was then that I saw, far off near the window at the front of the conference room, a person bent over a table, writing large slogan characters with a brush. On the large sheet of paper, only one character was written at a time. As I drew closer, I saw he was writing the character “践” (practice/carry out).

I asked, “Is Comrade Chen Qianli here?”

The old man did not answer me, and continued writing his large characters.

“I’m looking for Comrade Chen Qianli.”

He finished the final stroke, slowly raised his head, slowly straightened his back, set down his brush, pushed the paper further onto the table, then turned around and looked at me.

“I’m looking for Comrade Chen Qianli,” I said politely, though in truth I felt a little irritated, because his manner seemed almost deliberate.

He kept staring at me, saying not a single word. I thought he must be elderly and perhaps slow to respond, so I waited for his answer, standing there without moving. The two of us stood face to face like that for at least a minute, and then he spoke—just two words, really: “That’s me.”

The Chen Qianli I had pictured in my mind was not like this at all…

…Thinking back on it later, I realized I hadn’t actually obtained any new material from Chen Qianli during that interview. The whole process lasted nearly two hours, and yet if I added up everything he actually said, it probably amounted to no more than ten-odd minutes at most. Most of the time, I was the one talking. I recounted everything I had learned through my earlier investigation and reading, as if I were narrating that period of history to him, and he merely confirmed what I said, or disagreed with my views.

At times, my words seemed to awaken certain memories in him, allowing him to recall fragments of the distant past he had long forgotten. As I talked on, I even felt that even if it were only to help him resist the decline of an aging mind, it might still have been worthwhile.

But I gradually came to realize that his intellect had not diminished in the slightest, and his memory remained as intact as ever. Because every time I said something even slightly wrong, he would notice at once—though he did not always point it out to me. Sometimes there would be the faintest flicker in his eyes, sometimes his brow would furrow so slightly as to be almost invisible, or the corner of his mouth would move, as if he wanted to say something. His silence was very likely the result of long years of self-discipline, of self-training.

I asked him about Wei Dafu. I had read some files concerning him, all seized from the Nationalist Central Statistics Bureau, or confession materials from secret agents. I asked Chen Qianli whether Wei Dafu had truly betrayed the revolution—he had, after all, clearly revealed the secret operational plan to the enemy—so why had the enemy killed him? I guessed his situation might have been similar to that of Ouyang Min in Guangzhou.

But Chen Qianli answered clearly: “He was a sacrificial spy. He was a martyr.”

“After Comrade Hao Han escaped danger, which route did he take out of Shanghai to reach the Soviet base area?” He did not answer me. I thought he might not remember clearly, so I prompted him: “Did he board a ship that very night?”

He smiled faintly, neither confirming nor denying.

When I brought up the memoir Ye Qinian had published in a Hong Kong magazine in the 1960s, which still claimed that Chen Qianli had shot Ye Tao dead, he said quietly, “Ye Tao knows.”

Having said that, he turned back to writing his slogans, and paid me no further attention…