To Enjoy Dead Silence

“Well, I’ll be at the Red Capital Club.  Why don’t we all meet there?”  If you had asked me a few minutes earlier, I would have said it was closed.   How long ago was it I had taken a visiting delegation only to find an a large, ominous lock on the door, that suggested something rather final. 

I bumped into the proprietor six months later in Hong Kong and he confirmed, with a sigh, yes.  It was closed.  Many, many wonderful memories of that place, since I first visited in the late nineties.  Set in a historic courtyard in Dong Si Jiu Tiao, yes, it was filled with revolutionary memorabilia.  Some of it things that anyone could have gotten down at Pan Jia Yuan.  But some of it historic, like a table that Lin Biao had used or a curtain from Mao’s ZhongNanHai suite.  One of the revolutionary paintings, had been an inspiration, as I recall, for a screen play I wrote all those years ago, in the late nineties about what happens when the Chairman wakes up one day, there in his Tiananmen Square mausoleum and decides to get back to work. 

“So it’s back open again?  Cool.  Sure.  Let’s meet there.”  I was the last to arrive and as I did I sailed by Dong Si Jiu Taio to Dong Si Liu Tiao, as the map had said.  This must be an alternate location.  And though it was the interior was disarmingly akin to its neighbor a few blocks away.   Did we want to visit the bomb shelter?  Sure.  Why not.  And here and there were thoughtful signs to explain the significance of this or that artifact.   Back in the courtyard everyone from our party, went back into the dining room.  I stayed for a moment and admired the enormous walnut tree there in the center of the courtyard, which must have been three or four hundred years old.  All the things you’ve seen, old tree.  As always, in the dead center of the city, in a small hutong, its’ possible to enjoy dead silence in a hamlet of twenty million souls.  

The food was not unlike what I remember.  But despite the many bottles on the shelf, they proved to be, alas, mostly for show.  There was only one brand of wine, these days, which a modest Australian which I would have passed by in the super market.  But the conversation was good.  There was time for everyone to contribute.  Different old friends who’d been brought together for the first time were suddenly enjoying one another’s company as I’d hoped they would.  And up on the walls Mao, and Lin Biao, Liu Shao Qi and Zhou Enlai were all smiling.  Everyone looked very, very confident as was intended. 

Sunday 03/10/19