I've had a couple of near-brushes with prison in my life, the first, almost comical; the second not at all comical. Let's begin with humor, then go to drama.
I was in my one year of seminary after graduation from Yale. It was at the Union Theological Seminary, in New York City sandwiched on the Upper East Side between Columbia University a few blocks to the south and Harlem the same distance to the north. This being spring of 1968, student protests were in the air, mainly against the ongoing war in Vietnam ("Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids you killed today?"). A large group of student protestors led by Mark Rudd of the Students for a Democratic Society (sic) had taken possession of Columbia President Grayson Kirk's office in the administration building, barricading themselves in and generally trashing the office and daringly smoking cigars throughout the week or so of the protests. A few of my fellow seminarians had joined the protestors It was, of course, of keen interest to all of us, being as we were merely a couple of blocks from the excitement.
With amazingly bad timing, I decided to go see what was happening that day, on the morning of April 30. As I arrived, NYPD officers stormed the campus with tear gas, roughly yanked the protesters out of President Kirk's office, and shepherded some 700 protestors to the rows of "paddy wagons" awaiting us, the acrid smell of tear gas hanging in the air. Yes, "us." Young Ray found himself in a large group of very disheveled, wild-haired, smelly protestors being herded toward the paddy wagons.
"Hey, I'm not a protestor! I'm just a curious bystander. Hey!" I finally got a cop to look at me. Quite in contrast to the others, I was wearing a coat and tie, had recently shaved and showered, even combed my hair. He squinted at me, shook his head with a growl, and said, "Get outta here, you idiot." I eagerly agreed that I was an idiot, and removed myself speedily from the group and retreated to the peace and calm of my seminary room to study Old Testament history. I guess I'm not much of a protester; I was happy to concentrate on my studies from then on. (Though Columbia and many other campuses these days are still seeing protests, aren't they? I'm glad I'm retired.)
As it turned out, the majority of the 700 protestors at Columbia were from other colleges around the country, semi-professional agitators who fancied themselves to be saving America from a mistaken war in Southeast Asia. In fact, they succeeded, as LBJ (Lyndon Baines Johnson) did indeed decline to run for his second term of the presidency due to the turmoil engulfing the country. And by the second month of my 1969-70 tour of duty with the U.S. Army at Headquarters, US Army, Vietnam in Long Binh (but that's another story), I had also concluded, somewhat belatedly, that the protesters in fact were entirely right. I even suspected that we (the U.S.) might be fighting a losing battle on the wrong side of the conflict; I had reason to think that I was not the only one harboring such a suspicion. But that's all ancient history.
However, my finding myself in a group of protesters being herded to a paddy wagon was somewhat comical, despite the agonizing history associated with the Vietnam War. My second, not-a-bit comical brush with prison, occurred in Beijing, China, in the spring of 1984. I found myself surrounded by several dozen Chinese soldiers armed with rifles, with a crowd of some 50 bystanders eagerly watching what was about to happen to the skinny young foreign devil who had most unadvisedly spied on the leadership compound in the Second "Sea" of Zhong-Nan Hai Park in the Forbidden City.
What the heck was I doing in Beijing, China in the spring of 1984? I had co-led a tour to China two years earlier, with my buddy (former student, now close friend) Kyle in the group. Kyle and I chafed under the restrictions of the tour, led by a Chinese lady whose responsibility was taking us to sanctioned locations, and generally keeping us out of trouble. Kyle and I, characteristically, had come back to China to wander about the country on our own, not perhaps to get into trouble, but to do what we wanted.
I had corresponded with the Chinese scientist Ye Duzhuang, who had translated all of Charles Darwin' work into Chinese, wondering whether I might speak with him while I was in Peking. To my surprise, he invited me to give a lecture on May 7 to the scientists of the Academia Sinica by invitation of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), concerning "Current challenges to the Darwinian view of Evolution." (The IVPP was the successor to the paleontologists, including the Catholic priest Teilhard de Chardin, who discovered the Peking Man skulls in the late 1920's.) I gave my lecture to a crowd of over a hundred scientists, prefacing the talk in my rudimentary Chinese, then in English translated by a young Chinese fellow, Yu Xiaobo (with whom I have remained friends and corresponded for these 40 years).
After the talk, and a fascinating dinner at Ye's home (see chapter 23 in my 2021 Forgotten World for an in-depth history of Ye's tumultuous life and my dinner with him and his colleagues), I got to work on my secondary agenda item for the trip: research scenes and locales for what would be my first novel: Jade and Fire (Random House, 1987). In my research for the novel, I had stumbled across a reference to a small Chinese pavilion located some 15 yards off the shore of the Middle "Sea" constructed by Kublai Khan. Within this "Sea" (Zhong-Nan Hai) is located the compound of China's leaders, now as well as then. Though Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai had died in 1976 (prompting the massive demonstrations in Tiananmen Square soon after), in 1984 the top governing officials of China still lived in this compound, a sort of combined White House, FBI, CIA, and National Security Council gathering in one heavily protected place.
So here was the challenge: to get the photo of this pavilion (and its extremely evocative inscription, which plays an important role in Jade and Fire), I had to direct my camera towards the Middle "Sea" leaders' compound directly behind and beyond it. I reconnoitered the surroundings, noting the armed soldiers standing every 30 yards or so, keenly vigilant against those who wouldn't respect the leadership compound. Hmmm. Had to get a photo of that pavilion and its inscription. I ambled casually around the perimeter, glanced at the guards to my left and right, then when their attention wasn't focused on me, very quickly aimed my camera and got a good photo of the pavilion. No outcry, no nothing. Whew! I ambled a bit further, past another couple of guards to my right, and (I did a lot of stupid things like this, especially when young) I took another quick photo from what was marginally a different angle.
Mistake. This time I quickly found myself herded by two of the armed guards to a small open space on the side of the bridge separating the Middle "Sea" and the public park of the North "Sea". Very soon another dozen or so soldiers arrived, weapons aloft, guarding me ominously. Then their leader arrived, an old grizzled, hard-bitten fellow wearing a pistol at his waist.
He glared at me a long moment, as if he regretted what he had to do. He curtly told me to give him the film from my camera. I understood the Chinese, but pretended not to. I volunteered to take a photo of everyone. He of the pistol elaborately pantomimed what he wanted me to do: take the film out of the bloody camera and give it to him.
Ordinarily, I would have been happy to do that. But this particular roll was a 72-shot roll, and it had all my photos from Hangzhou and its tea gardens and Taoist temples on it, not to mention my precious pavilion. I was very opposed to losing those shots. So I offered to take everyone's photo again. The fellow with the pistol became angry, and shouted something at me. He reached out for me, as if to take me into custody. It was the make-or-break moment. For some reason—this was my first novel he was about to torpedo!—I backed away from him, turned, shoved my way through the fifty or so bystanders, and walked shakily across the street toward the public gardens in the North "Sea", where my buddy Kyle was waiting. I fully expected a rough hand on my shoulder turning me around to take me into custody. I walked further. No hand. As I got into the public gardens, I ventured a look around. I was already, miraculously, out of sight of the soldiers, the pistoled one, and the crowd. I stumbled on, found Kyle on a bench.
"What the hell's wrong with you?" he enquired when he saw my face and my shaky walking. I couldn't answer. With trembling hands I shakily but carefully rolled up the film to its end in my camera. (Most of those reading this will not know how an old 1984 camera worked. You could physically roll up the film and retrieve it from the camera, containing whatever photos you had taken until that time.) I took the film out of the camera.
"Take this. Put it in your backpack," I croaked to Kyle. He did so, to my relief. I was still awaiting the pistol fellow to catch up with me and take me wherever they took enemies of the state. I took out a new roll of film and put it in the camera. If the pistoled one confiscated my camera for evidence, they wouldn't find anything on the (new) film. I sat back on the bench, and recounted my misadventure to Kyle.
He laughed. Annoyed, I turned to him. "See that high Dagoba behind us?" he asked. I nodded at the faux Tibetan tower in the North "Sea" park. "From there you can see everything. Including your pavilion in the Middle "Sea". I put my telephoto lens on, mounted the camera on the tripod, and got plenty of pictures of it for you!"
I groaned.
I never did understand why the fellow with the pistol didn't pursue me. Perhaps he didn't think the whole ruckus was worth it; after all, it was just a skinny foeign devil that had merely taken a photo of the leader's compound. Perhaps he had other more pressing things to do that day. Perhaps he was late to meet his young wife for an afternoon liaison. Whatever.
Why, you ask, did I get into these scrapes? Those of us who were college-age in the late 1960's realized that we were living in unusually turbulent times in America. I've been very cognizant during my teaching career from 1976 to 2008 that my students lived in such different times, times when you didn't face the unalterable threat of being drafted and sent to a war in Southeast Asia. Those times were incredibly difficult for those of us faced with such drastic life choices.
And a similar turbulence had ruled China since—well, since the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, actually. Wars, warlords, kidnappings, assassinations; the civil war between Nationalists and Communists, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the Gang of Four. Unavoidable threats convulsing a whole society.
You want turbulence? Several American Sinologists in the last year have come to the conclusion, based on various good reasons, that sometime in the window of 2025 to 2027, current leader Xi Jinping will decide China is strong enough to invade Taiwan and forcibly reclaim it for the Motherland, thus becoming the greatest Chinese leader since Mao. At that point, America's president, whomever it may be, will be forced to decide whether the defense of Taiwan is worth a full-out war with China. A nuclear-armed China, at that, perhaps aided by its ally North Korea, with our West Coast well within the range of their nuclear missiles.
There are times when, lamentably, I'm almost glad I'm about to turn 80, and not expected to be so active in our national life. Yes, we're living in a turbulent world. Good luck to us all.
Postscript. You can read Jade and Fire to discover the evocative inscription on the pavilion; pages 344-345 in the Random House hardcover edition.