Thirsty Dragon Prepares for the Olympics

Extract

The picture on this page was taken by a People's Pictorial photographer in 1953. The sixty-year-old Mao Zedong had just finished writing a calligraphic inscription that read “Celebrate the successful completion of the Guanting Reservoir Project.” The man sitting next to him was my father-in-law, Wang Sen, the project manager for the dam.

The photograph was probably published in some newspaper or other around that time. Even if I'd seen it, I wouldn't have paid any attention to it. I certainly never imagined that fifteen years later I'd marry the project manager's son, Wang Dejia, thereby becoming the daughter-in-law of a man once shown relaxing on the bank of the dam, chatting and laughing with the “Great Leader.”