My grandfather had fought with the anti-Japanese guerrillas. He knew the founding members of the new government; he knew what went on in headquarters during the war; he watched the postwar years unfold. They named him a Hero of the Revolution and buried him with high honors, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t always worried every time he opened his mouth.

I had thought they would pack me off to Yanggang, drop me as far away as they could, so the only ones who might listen to the old stories about people and events that were never supposed to be told would be a few pheasants and the ghosts of the tigers that had gone away long ago. But instead of Yanggang, someone picked an empty mountaintop near Changsong with a view of a little river valley. I don’t think it occurred to them that, as far as I was concerned, the view was a plus.

An old truck carrying a load of scrap lumber took me up the road to the top of the mountain one foggy morning in April. The driver and I had to get out a few times to move big rocks that had tumbled down the hillside and blocked the way. Near the top of the mountain was a small clearing, surrounded by a few tall trees. In the center was a hut that wouldn’t last another winter, so from the moment the truck drove away until the first morning of autumn-sharp with cold and crystal clear-I was mostly alone, building a one-room house using my grandfather’s carpenter’s tools. One afternoon in July, after three days of rain that made it impossible for me to work, a team of soldiers appeared. They had strung a phone line up the side of the mountain, and when I said I didn’t want it they told me they couldn’t care less. Two men in a Ministry car drove up with the phone three months later, just before the first snow. I told them I didn’t need a phone, but they said it was implied in the agreement and it had to be hooked up. In any case, the army had already installed the line and it would be a waste of the people’s resources if it stayed unconnected, they said.