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publisher. I have a new collection –
Thoughts At Twilight
– that’s just the working title. I’m sure to come up with something much better, only…’
    Only I can’t use my preferred title
, The Vanishing World.
It wouldn’t get past the censors
.
    They talked for hours after that, catching up on what each of them had been doing, throwing in whatever they knew of old friends and acquaintances. Towards the end, however, it seemed to Jiang that they were holding something back. There was something they wanted to say, but felt they couldn’t. Was it something about his wife, Chun Hua?
    Finally, Pan Tsung-yen seemed to lick at his lips as if they were dry. Then, with a brief, revealing glance at the camera, he spoke out.
    ‘It has been good to see you, Jiang Lei. It is pleasing to know that the years have enhanced our friendship. But there was a reason for us coming here tonight, and though we may get ourselves in trouble for saying so, it would have been a betrayal of our friendship to have neglected saying it.’
    Pan Tsung-yen paused. ‘We think you are in danger here, Jiang Lei. Things have changed. You may even have sensed it yourself. Various of our friends, whom we dare not mention by name, have died.’
    ‘Victims of court intrigues?’ Jiang asked.
    ‘Who knows…’ Pan Tsung-yen answered. ‘Yet they
are
dead.’
    Hsü Jung sat forward suddenly, anger in his face. ‘It is a viper’s nest, Jiang Lei. A foul, oppressive place. And the spies…’
    Spies?
Jiang Lei narrowed his eyes at the word. ‘And you think I might be subject to these…
intrigues
?’
    ‘The Han are Han,’ Pan Tsung-yen said, nodding to himself. ‘A nation of gatekeepers and opportunists. Corruption is rife, Jiang Lei. As to whom you can trust…’
    ‘Trust no one,’ Hsü Jung said.
    ‘Not even you?’ Jiang asked.
    Hsü Jung shrugged, then smiled at the paradox. ‘Least of all us… after tonight.’
    Pan Tsung-yen stood. ‘Come. We have said enough. We’d best leave you now, dear friend, dear Nai Liu.’
    When they were gone, Jiang went and sat at his portable comset.
    Who knew who was watching him? All that was certain was that someone was. Maybe even Tsao Ch’un himself. But, whoever it was, they would know he had been warned.
    Unfolding the keyboard, Jiang typed in ‘
Su Tung-p’o
’ and sat back.
    At once a face appeared. It looked like a photograph, but it couldn’t be. Su Tung-p’o had died in 1101.
    A list of options appeared. He selected BIOGRAPHY.
    ‘Text or spoken word,’ the machine asked, in its light, anodyne tone.
    ‘Text.’
    The truth was he couldn’t stand that voice. Would have changed it, had it been allowed. Only it wasn’t.
    Su Tung-p’o had, it seemed, not been alone in his calling. Both his father and his younger brothers had been poets of some note. Su had taken his exams in 1057, at the age of twenty-one, and done brilliantly – so well that his papers were copied and circulated among students. However, before he could be appointed to a government office, his mother had died. Being a good son, he returned home to spend the next twenty-seven months in mourning for her, as was strict Confucian practice. It was thus not until 1061 that he had taken up his appointment as an assistant magistrate in Shen-hsi Province.
    All might have been well, for Su Tung-p’o was a distinguished official, but he was sympathetic to the plight of the common people. Through his poetry, he made clear his opposition to the policies of Wang An-Shih, a fellow poet who was the architect of the government’s plan to enforce the centralized control of the Chinese economy.
    Despite various banishments and exile, Su had a long and distinguished career, including being secretary to the emperor from 1086 to 1089, but his political enemies finally triumphed. Even so, Su Tung-p’o lived on, through his beautifully crafted poems and his writings, the clarity and simplicity of which meant that they were copied many times