Mai Jia - Decoded

When people said that he was even worse than before, they were complaining about the fact that he was wasting more and more of his time in playing chess and reading novels; later on he also got into trouble for interpreting people’s dreams. Once they realized that he could interpret dreams, he attracted a horde of curious people, tracking him down so that they could tell him about the weird things that had popped into their heads overnight and wanting to know what it all meant. As with playing chess, Rong Jinzhen really didn’t know very much about the subject, but he found it difficult to say no to people’s faces. Maybe it is simply that he did not have the savoir faire to be able to turn them down politely. Anyway, he had no choice but to agree. He would take their tangled night-time thoughts and straighten them out into something that seemed to make good sense.

Every Thursday afternoon there was a political meeting for all the people working at Unit 701. They did different things at this meeting: sometimes a new policy would be explained, sometimes there would be a reading from the newspapers, sometimes there would be free discussion. When it was the latter, people would often drag Rong Jinzhen off into a corner and get him to interpret their dreams. There was one time where just as he was in the middle of explaining someone’s dream, he happened to come to the attention of the deputy division chief (one of the cadres in charge of raising political awareness) who was overseeing this particular meeting. This deputy division chief was very left-wing, and liked making a mountain out of a molehill — he was the sort of person that always leaps to the very worst conclusions. He decided that what Rong Jinzhen was doing was feudal superstition. Jinzhen was criticized in pretty severe terms and told to write a self-criticism.

The deputy division chief did not have many friends among his subordinates. The people in the cryptography division loathed him and so they all told Rong Jinzhen not to pay any attention to the man — just write a couple of lines and draw a line under the whole thing. Rong Jinzhen tried to follow this advice but his idea of how to draw a line under the whole thing and anyone else’s really did not coincide. When he handed in his self-criticism, it consisted of just one line: ‘All the secrets in the world are hidden in dreams and that includes ciphers.’

This is not the kind of thing that gets you out of trouble. He was clearly trying to prevaricate, as if interpreting other people’s dreams were in some way related to cryptography. There was even an arrogant overtone to the statement, suggesting that he was the only person who understood this crucial point. Even though the deputy division chief understood nothing about cryptography, he found the idea that something as individualistic as a dream could be allowed to go unchecked profoundly disgusting. He looked at the self-criticism and felt as though each word were pulling faces at him, sneering at him, humiliating him, running wild, throwing stones. . how could this possibly be acceptable? He was not going to stand for this! Jumping up, he grabbed hold of the self-criticism and rushed furiously out of his office. Leaping onto the back of a motorbike, he drove straight for the mountain cave. He kicked open the steel door to the cryptography division and right there in front of everyone he swore at Rong Jinzhen, using the tone of voice of a much-tried superior. Pointing at Jinzhen, he fired off his final shot: ‘You have expressed your opinion; now let me tell you mine: every ugly toad thinks that sooner or later he is going to get to eat the meat of a swan!’

The deputy division chief had no idea that he would have to pay a horrible price for what he said on this occasion; in fact, he ended up being so humiliated over it that he had to leave Unit 701. The fact is that while the deputy division chief was maybe a little hasty, it was the kind of thing that everyone in the cryptography unit was also saying — they found nothing wrong with it at the time; in fact, as far as they could see he had it absolutely right. As I have said before, in order to succeed in this solitary, difficult and dangerous profession, quite apart from great intelligence and the necessary knowledge and experience, you also need a luck that comes from far beyond the stars. The impression that Rong Jinzhen had given everybody was that he simply did not have the natural intelligence required. Furthermore, he had shown no signs of being either lucky or of creating his own luck. It seemed more than likely that the deputy section chief was right.

There is a proverb in China which these people should have remembered: ‘You cannot measure the ocean with a ladle; you cannot tell what someone can do just by looking at him.’

Of course, the ultimate reply to his detractors was that one year later Rong Jinzhen cracked PURPLE.

One year!

He decrypted PURPLE!

Who would have guessed that at a time when everyone was avoiding PURPLE like the plague, this so-called ugly toad was just squaring up to the task! If anyone had realized what he was up to, they would have laughed at him. Sometimes people say that the ignorant are fearless. Well in this case, as it turned out, the facts demonstrated that this particular ugly toad was not only a genius, he also had the luck of one. He had the luck that comes from far beyond the stars. He had the luck that you see when you raise your hands at exactly the same moment as smoke appears above your ancestors’ graves.

Rong Jinzhen’s luck was unbelievable. You cannot ask for that kind of thing. Some people said that he decrypted PURPLE in his sleep — or perhaps it was as a result of interpreting someone else’s dream. Some people said that he found inspiration in the chess games that he played with the lunatic. Some people said that he got the key to the whole thing when reading one of his novels. Whatever the truth of the matter, it seemed as though he had managed to decrypt PURPLE with hardly any effort — that really amazed people, as well as making them jealous and excited! Everyone was excited. Jealousy was left to the experts who had been sent by headquarters. They really thought that with the pointers Liseiwicz was sending them, they would be the ones who would be lucky enough to decrypt PURPLE.

This was the winter of 1957. Rong Jinzhen had spent just over a year at Unit 701.

Twenty-five years later, the crippled director of Unit 701 sat in the middle of his very plainly appointed living room and told me that when everyone else was using a ladle to measure the potential of Rong Jinzhen’s sea, he was one of the few people who still held out any hope that he might ever achieve something. To hear him tell it, no one else at that time really understood Jinzhen in the slightest. I don’t know whether this is all hindsight, or whether the thing really did happen the way that he said. All I can tell you is what he told me:

[Transcript of the interview with Director Zheng]

To tell the truth, I have spent my entire life working in cryptography and I have never seen anyone with such a remarkable sixth sense where ciphers were concerned as [Rong Jinzhen] had. He seemed to find a kind of connection with the ciphers he worked on, an umbilical connection such as you see between a mother and baby — whereby a great deal of information seemed to pass directly between them, through the blood as it were. That was one impressive thing about the way he approached a cipher. The other impressive thing was his remarkable powers of concentration and his cold and calm intelligence — the more other people gave the thing up as hopeless, the more determined he was to push it. He really didn’t care what other people thought about him. His creative abilities were fully the equal of his intelligence — they were a key part of his personality. In both cases they were easily double that of an ordinary person. When you discovered just how magnificent his quiet achievements were, it was inspirational; but also made you realize how puny and incapable you were in comparison.