ABSTRACT
Tiziano Terzani is an accomplished and devoted Asian specialist. During the Vietnam War he built a reputation for his reporting of the tragedy. He was a leftist, but when he went to China he was disturbed by what he found. He lived in Peking for four years, often wearing Chinese clothes and traveling by bicycle, behavior which gave rise to suspicions of espionage. A few of the items were of possible significance, but Terzani appears to have purchased them legally and made no attempt to export them. The text of various laws was read to him, some referring to sentences of as long as ten years. But Terzani was more cooperative, and he was treated better by his inquisitors. So Terzani wrote 25 pages and entitled them “China and Me.” They dealt with his long-standing relationship with China, his early sympathy for Mao Zedong, and the objects he had acquired.
