Harry Wu's Description of Mao's Railway (and other) Quirks

Some of us will remember Harry Wu (吴弘达, pictured in a dated photo here) as the Chinese-American who spent years under China's harsh detention system, and later started the Laogai Research Foundation (劳改基金会) in the United States to expose the horrors of China's forced detention system.

He was also the source of a diplomatic standoff between the United State and China in 1995 after he was arrested for slipping into Chinese labor camps to obtain incriminating evidence against the country's detention system.

After his arrest, then First Lady Hilary Clinton threatened not to attend the Fourth World Conference on Women sponsored by the United Nations and held in Beijing that year unless Wu was released.

Anyway in his book Troublemaker, One Man's Crusade Against China's Cruelty, Wu wrote about the royal treatment he had received after his arrest.

He said "they never put handcuffs on me, never search my bag" and "treated me like a captured dignitary." Well, all because of his new status as an American citizen. Otherwise, he was sure he would be thrown like a rat into the deepest of dungeons.

Reflecting about his arrest, Wu had this to say:

"On my three successful trips, I had penetrated the empty spaces of China, where the lost souls are hidden, but now I was an honored guest, riding the rails in my own private car. I had achieved the highest station in Chinese life. I was being treated like Chairman Mao."

"Our wise and caring chairman almost never flew on his spur-of-the-moment journeys, so his staff kept entire railway trains ready for him. In his raging paranoia, Mao felt that one special railroad train would be too easy to sabotage, so his staff had to maintain three identical trains, and he would personally choose one at the last moment. I've always wondered why, if Chairman Mao was so universally beloved, anybody would conspire to blow up his train."

"Because the chairman never slept or made love at predictable hours, whenever he wanted a little peace and quiet, without the clattering of the wheels underneath him, the train should be shunted to a siding, an entire province thrown into chaos with no explanation."

Of course Mao could do anything he pleased, since he was the emperor. And no prizes for guessing where Mao's northern comrade (the one with the bouffant hairstyle) picked up his railway quirks from.