Lesson 22

    To the prisoners' surprise, the 40-year-old security veteran used talk rather than punishment to restore discipline.
    Wang finaliy got to know most of the prisoners and their concerns. Many were afraid that their spouses would divorce them and their children would be left homeless. Many worried about their work and life after being released.
    Wang set out policies to reform his prisoners. He developed educa tion programmes tailor-made to each prisoner's specific case and family background. The prisoners were moved by his sincerity.
    A larcener was frightened when his wife asked for a divorce the first time she came to see him.

    "This is the last time we see each other, ?the wife said. "I sent the divorce papers to the court yesterday. I will return with our son to my hometown in Shandong Province tomorrow."
    Angry and disappointed, the larcener pretended to be indiffeient and said he agreed and that it didn't matter to him what she did.
    "I will find a better girl if I'm released," he told his sobbing wife.
    When she left he burst into tears. Wang came to his cell and asked why he cried since he had agreed to the divorce. The larcener confessed he could not live without his wife; he simply did not want to lose face before the other prisoners.

    Later on, Wang got to know that the couple loved each other deeply. The wife wanted a divorce because she felt embarrassed when she met his friends and was looked down upon by her mother-in-law since he was put in jail.
    Wang believed the man's reform would he harder to achieve if some solution to this dilemma wasn't found. He wrote to the larcener's brother-in-law, his wife's brother who was a middle-school teacher in Shandong Province, urging him to persuade his sister to change her mind.

    Ten days later, Wang received a letter from Wang's brother-in-law, saying that he would try to persuade his sister into taking back the divorce papers and waiting for her husband.
    Half a month later, the wife came with her son to the prison to see her busband and express her gratitude to Wang Hongwu.
    The larcenef pledged to reform and Wang said he would try to get him as early a release as possible.

                      6. Second Chance : a Love Story

    Chen Surong and Zeng Xiangjie are factory workers in Shuicheng City, Guizhou Province. They seem like any other young Chinese couple: they have a two-year-old daughter, live in a two-room apartment and lead a quiet and uneventful life.
    It wasn't always this way.
    Chen Surong was a worker at a plastics factory in Yunnan Province when she met Zeng Xiangjie, who worked at a Guizhou cement factory, on a train in 1975. They fell in love at first sight.
    After two years of correspondence and occasional visits, the two decided
to get married.

    All the arrangements were made and just before Spring Festival in 1977, Chen waited for her fiance to come to Yunnan for the wedding. He never showed up, nor was there a letter of explanation.
    Ten days latcr, Chen decided she must go to Guizhou and find out what had happened.
   It was snowing heavily when she arrived at the Guizhou train station and the roads were slushy as she trudged off to the cement #actory.

   She found Zeng's dormitory and rapped on the door of his room. "Xiangjie, Xiangjie..." she called out, but there was no answer. Finally, she found a key and uniocked the door: the room was empty, messy and there was no quilt on his bed.
Confused, Chen stopped some passersby and asked them abont Zeng. They had never heard of him, they told her. At last, she found an old worker, who said: "You'd better go to the factory security department."

    The young woman ran to the security department of the factory, and was told that Zeng had been detained because "he had been stealing factory property."
    Chen couldn't believe her ears. But then she saw for herself. in the small detention room, Zeng Xiangjie squatted behind a locked door, and she knew it was true.
    "Xiangjie, what's the matter with you?" she asked him.
    He did not raise his eyes. He covered his face with his hands and wept.
    "Come on, what did you do?" Chen insisted.
    "I'm sorry... I deceived you. .. I am a guilty man, I'm ruined..." Zeng numbled as tears roiled down lais cheeks.
    Before sh

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