1

It almost always begins in darkness, my memory’s trip back to the

China where Terence and I meet.
In the first week of February 1983, I fly in to Peking to take up
my post as the correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. I am
looking out the window of a Pan Am flight as it circles, preparing
to land. Below is the country’s capital, one of the world’s biggest
cities. This is not the China of the Olympics, the futuristic
seventy-story towers and magnetic trains, of stylish wealthy en-
trepreneurs and world-devouring currency reserves. In 1983,
eleven years after President Nixon’s 1972 walk along the Great
Wall, the country is still enmeshed in the shock and trauma of the
Cultural Revolution and of the turbulent three decades since the
People’s Republic of China was formed in 1949. It’s still easy to
see the gashing wounds from years of isolation, poverty, and the
political instability of the Cultural Revolution that has barely
ended.
Peking—it is still Peking in those days—is the home of 9.3 mil-
lion people, yet there is none of the exuberant burst of light that
normally greets travelers flying into a big city. There are no ocher
ribbons of highway spiraling out from the city’s center, nor do
snakes of white headlights flow in one direction, red taillights in
another. No massive office buildings flaunt shining squares into
the night long after the workers have left for home. There are no
cheerfully lighted houses either, no boxlike warrens of high-rise
apartments fanning out to lighted loops of suburban cul-de-sacs.

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 8 amanda bennett

Instead, here in China’s capital in the early 1980s, most people

still live in dark one-story brick or stone courtyard houses with
public street latrines. Even in the center of the city, some families
still raise chickens and small pigs. Many homes still have no elec-
tricity at all.
It is a dark and silent city. In 1983 the country still hasn’t recov-
ered from the decadelong nightmare of the Cultural Revolution
that pitted colleague against colleague, neighbor against neigh-
bor, child against parent. The bleakness disturbs me. There are
only a handful of cars—some owned by a tiny city-owned taxi
fleet, a few driven by diplomats or journalists, as well as the hulk-
ing Russian-style Hongqi limousines favored by high-ranking
Party officials. Someone sometime told someone that headlights
burn gasoline, so only parking lights are used at night. The cars
are ghostly shadows with tiny yellow cats’ eyes.
Almost all the necessities of life—food, clothing, shelter—are
supplied by the factory or office. Stores have only recently begun
to reemerge, but most shop windows are still boarded up or plas-
tered over. For many weeks I don’t even realize that these dark-
ened doorways are stores. It is a dingy, featureless wasteland.
For the first several months I live alone in an apartment that is
also my office. While the telex clatters behind me, every night I
stand on the twelfth-floor balcony looking down into the dark
night toward the southeast of the city. I live herded together with
the other journalists and diplomats in this walled compound of
cinder-block buildings, guarded—and watched—by soldiers.
The winter air is bitter with the smoke of the soft coal bri-
quettes that people use to heat their houses. Off in the distance I
hear the wail of a train whistle. Directly below me, metal clops
against asphalt as the horse-drawn delivery carts still allowed into
the center city after sundown make their nightly rounds. Even
late at night the streets pulse with bikers heading to work or back
home or who knows where. Only the barest hint of color—

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 the cost of hope 9

a sleeve, a scarf, a ribbon—has begun to appear here and there to

brighten the Communist-era Mao-style dress. Otherwise the bik-
ers, both men and women, are all dark. Dark jackets. Dark trou-
sers. Dark shoes. Dark hats. Dark bikes.
I stand on my balcony and think how lucky I am to be here at
this historic moment—how excited, and at the same time how
frightened, alone, and confused I am in this bleak, strange, unwel-
coming place.
On Saturday, September 3, 1983, as midnight approaches I am
still working. I work pretty much all the time. Just as I am start-
ing to fade with exhaustion, New York wakes up with its barrage
of questions and comments and demands. Working all day and
then answering the phone through the night adds a kind of sur-
real, never-quite-awake/never-quite-asleep quality to my life in
China.
Tonight I struggle with the story that just won’t fall into shape.
Mikhail Kapitsa, a Soviet deputy foreign minister, is set to arrive
in the capital. He is the highest-ranking Soviet to visit since China
and the Soviet Union broke off relations in 1960. Because the two
countries had split, few Soviet experts are left in China, at least
ones willing to talk. I can find almost no one who understands the
politics of both countries well enough to explain the significance
of the visit. There is no Internet; I check the indexes of all the
reference books I have brought and find nothing. My interviews
have been next to useless.
I planned to skip the party that John Broder, the Chicago Tri-
bune correspondent, is throwing. I must get this piece written!
But I am worn out, lonely, and discouraged. I leave the yellow
sheets in the typewriter and wander over, intending to stay for
only a few minutes. John Broder is a witty, lively, guitar-playing
bon vivant. His wife is beautiful and dark-haired with a wisp of
an exotic accent—Israeli? Their party is an event.
The bow-tied man on the sofa across the room is wearing

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 10 amanda bennett

horn-rimmed glasses. He looks a bit out of place, maybe even a

bit out of time. He’s older than the others. Stouter. More formal.
When he motions me over, I settle in next to him and begin to
tell him the subject of my troublesome story. His eyes light up.
Sino-Soviet politics are his specialty, he says. In fact, he is here
in Peking as a Fulbright scholar, on a one-year fellowship to
China precisely to study the relations between China and the
Soviet Union. We begin an intense conversation about the per-
sonal and professional hostilities between Mao and Stalin that
had led to the countries’ rift in the 1950s. The terrible economic
price China had paid for the split. The effect on world politics of
the two rivals, and the change in balance of power when the
United States opened its arms gingerly again to China. It is a
masterful discussion. Just what I have been missing. Just what I
need. I am not so much of a geek as to bring a notepad to the
party, so I try to memorize as much as I can before, close to 3:00
a.m., I say good night and walk home alone. I live only two build-
ings over, inside the compound surrounded by soldiers. By the
next morning I remember the substance of the talk but not the
man’s name.
That afternoon I call our host. The Fulbright scholar? John is
stumped. People just show up at his parties. He didn’t know half
the people in the room. I make a few other calls, but no one seems
to recall the proper middle-aged man with the owlish glasses and
bow tie. Without a name to pin the observations on, I’m not com-
fortable writing the story, so I let it go and chalk it up as another
disappointment.
A few months go by. I have almost forgotten about him in the
press of work. Then, without warning, I spot him again at another
staple of 1980s China social life—a bank reception. A big Ameri-
can bank is opening its office here. It has rented the courtyard of
a lovely old prerevolutionary home. The space is filled with the
usual assortment of businesspeople, journalists, and Chinese of-

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 the cost of hope 11

ficials in Mao jackets. There are drinks and hors d’oeuvres and
endless speeches about friendship and cooperation. He is stand-
ing alone.
“I’ve been looking for you,” I say.
“I was going to call,” he answers. “I’ve been traveling.” This
time, at a business occasion instead of a party, he automatically
hands me his card, as I just as automatically hold out mine.

Terence B. Foley
Country Director
American Soybean Association

“Soybeans? I don’t understand. You said you were a Fulbright

scholar. Studying Sino-Soviet relations.”
He shrugs. “You’re cute. You’re a journalist. I wanted to talk to
you. Journalists are always working. How long would you have
talked to me if I told you I was in soybeans? You wanted to talk
about China and Russia, so I made up a person who could talk
about China and Russia. I knew you’d find out sooner or later.”
Soybeans?
Made it up?
I stare at the card.
“You asshole!” I finally blurt out. “You could have gotten me
fired!” I stamp away.
And that is how we met.
Years later, this becomes our signature story, a kind of stand-up
routine for both of us. When our children are old enough, we tell
them the story at least once a year.
At his funeral, I stand up and tell it alone.

I don’t see him again until about three months later, on Febru-
ary 2, 1984. It’s Chinese New Year, the first day of the Year of the

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 Excerpted from The Cost of Hope by Amanda Bennett. Copyright © 2012 by
Amanda Bennett. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of
Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced
or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.