One day in 2019 Yang got a call from a government official, who told him that they had recently acquired a trove of surveillance files from the old regime’s secret police. It included notes on Yang from his dissident days. Would he like to take a look?
Yang went to an office building where, on a desk, officials had placed two fat stacks of yellowing files plastered with Post-its, each about a metre high. Inside were meticulous handwritten notes on who Yang met every day, who he called, who he drank with, and what they said. There was a hand-drawn map of his home, with photos of the rooms and bookshelves. One entry noted that agents had bought a property near Yang’s home to watch him more closely. Another claimed that his child’s nanny had been recruited as an informant.
Most of the informants were referred to by codenames, but there were enough details for Yang to work out who they were. At first, he wasn’t angry. The authoritarian system was violent, he reasoned. Its officials knew how to scare people into doing what they wanted. Many of those he identified as informers had in fact already apologised to him for it. But there was one figure he hadn’t known about before, who seemed to have been in the bar with him every night. This informant, he read with horror, was studying art. It could only be Huang.
Yang was an old man who had lived through cruel times, and little shocked him. But this hurt, he said. “Like a knife in your back.” | | |
