Chen He’s personal life

In Albania, it was difficult to do business, experienced turmoil, and encountered kidnapping

I am from Wenzhou. Some people may know that Wenzhou is a place for doing business. I went abroad in May 1994 When I arrived in Albania, my experience before going abroad was probably similar to that of many domestic people. I joined the army in 1976, played basketball in the army for a few years, and then came back and worked as a small cadre in Wenzhou Auto Transport Company. At that time, in the 1980s, everyone was a literary youth, and they had written some things, including some novellas, until 1994. Later, I felt that staying in a small place like Wenzhou would not be good enough for writing. I had been writing for many years at that time. I remember Hemingway said something. He said that if a rookie learns writing, after five years of study, if you have not achieved anything at all in these five years, then you Just don’t write it.

So by chance, a relative of mine, who was also a cadre of the country, came to Hungary first. He was doing business in Hungary, and a group of Albanians bought his goods, but they didn’t have any money. Pay, after the man left, he chased the man. He later drove from Hungary along several European highways to Albania to find the man and ask for money. As a result, when he entered Albania, he felt that Albania was a very good place, because in 1992, Albania’s original socialist country had just collapsed and turned into a free country. At that time, it was a free economy and lacked many things. Later, my relatives stayed in Albania. He later told me that the place was very good, would you like to come? I didn't think it was that interesting in Wenzhou at the time, but then I got this opportunity. I remember I flew to Albania in May 1994. I still remember that the plane flew to Italy and Rome first, then changed to a smaller plane from Rome and then flew to Tirana. But looking from the plane, Tirana was very small and very poor. It was at that time that I started doing business in Albania. .

When we went to Albania, we never imagined that we would return to writing in the future. Since we first arrived there, we have been working hard on business. Maybe those who are a little older may know Albania. We are somewhat familiar with that place because there were many Albanian movies in the 1960s and 1970s, so we will not be too unfamiliar with that place. After arriving, I really felt that Albania is a small country and relatively backward, but the European culture or beauty it preserves is particularly touching. Their country is very laid-back. They go to work at 7 o'clock in the morning and get off work until they get off work at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. After work, they have lunch, then go home and take a nap after lunch. Everyone will go shopping around 5 o'clock. How many of them are there? The big street garden is full of people, many people, everyone is very happy, drinking coffee and chatting in the coffee shop. On weekends, whether they have money or not, they will go to the beach to swim and drink beer, and they are very happy. We are doing business in such a happy place.

We were in the pharmaceutical business, importing drugs such as penicillin, paracetamol, and streptomycin from China. Albania uses Chinese medicine and has great faith in Chinese medicine. I now remember the first batch of medicines that went through the container. At that time, they were short of a container of penicillin. The words printed on the label at that time did not have Latin characters, but all the words penicillin in Chinese. I remember that the manufacturer was a pharmaceutical factory in Shijiazhuang. When I got there, people asked me what this thing was and I couldn’t understand the name. Of course there are some pharmacists who can understand it, but most people can't. He said that this would not work and suggested that we change it again. How to change it? At that time, the Chinese characters had been printed, so we suggested using self-adhesive printing to affix them one by one. However, there were thousands of boxes in the container, and each box contained a thousand bottles of penicillin. If it were to be modified manually, it would be a very large project. Later, our landlord seemed to be a pilot, and his wife had been to China and was also a doctor. She said you leave it to me and I will ask the neighbor next door to patch it up for you. A box of penicillin can be done for one US dollar. As a result, she mobilized the surrounding residents to do this, because Albania had just changed in the 1990s, and they were very poor, and no one was even willing to eat bread. Unexpectedly, the appeal was so great. As soon as she called for it, when the door opened the next day, people were queuing up outside, waiting to bring penicillin back to help you apply it. Some people told me that this man was the former ambassador of Albania to Austria, and that this man turned out to be a painter. I was a little embarrassed to ask such noble people from Albania to do such a small thing, but they were still very happy because they were in financial difficulty at the time. That’s when we started the pharmaceutical business in Albania. So through these things, I came into contact with the lives of many ordinary people in Albania.

There are many Chinese in Albania, and the backgrounds of the Chinese are relatively complex. Some are doing business, but some are smugglers. Why do you do smuggling? Because Albania is located in the Balkan Peninsula. Its geographical location is separated from Italy by the Agririan Sea. Over there is Eastern Europe and over here is Western Europe. Eastern Europe and Western Europe are worlds apart. People from all over the world want to smuggle immigrants. They all smuggled there through Albania, so there were many people smuggling in Albania at that time.

We made some money from the pharmaceutical trade, and there happened to be a Chinese restaurant there. It was opened by an overseas Chinese in Italy. But his purpose of opening the Chinese restaurant was to use the Chinese restaurant to smuggle people from China. After he opened the Chinese restaurant, he brought He hired dozens of people as his workers, and then sent those people to Italy. After that, the Chinese restaurant became meaningless to him, and he said he would transfer it to us. We had just arrived there, and we thought that there had never been a Chinese restaurant before, so we thought it would be interesting to make one. We could eat in a Chinese restaurant, make money, and receive friends. So while doing the pharmaceutical business, I also ran a Chinese restaurant. But to be honest, we don’t know how to run a Chinese restaurant, so we ate a lot. But what are the benefits of being a Chinese restaurant? People from all walks of life come to our place, including Albania, which is also a capital city and has embassies from all over the world. As a result, officials from embassies from all over the world also come to our place to have dinner, and we meet a lot of people. There are also many people who are smugglers who often come to our place to eat, so I know a lot of the gangsters who were smuggling there at that time.

I remember one time, we had a woman named Huang. She was also from Wenzhou. She used to be a smuggler in Austria. She was very famous. She opened a restaurant in Austria called Shanghai House. In fact, it was A smuggling center. It turned out that the police had been monitoring them, and finally caught her and drove her to Albania. She often ate at our place and we became acquainted with each other. Later, she introduced us to Athens, Greece. She said she had a friend. They were also smugglers there, and we met them later, and the underworld stuff was quite interesting. That person always drives a Rolls-Royce and has connections with senior Greek officials. Therefore, opening this restaurant is a good channel for us to get in touch with people smuggling things and understand them. Later, when the restaurant was finally open, we didn't want to open it ourselves. We negotiated with the original landlord, which meant that we didn't want to open the restaurant, and we didn't have the energy to continue to open it. The landlord knew we were leaving. He came looking for us after drinking that day. He locked the door outside and took out a pistol. What do I mean? He said you come with us. I said why should I follow you? He said lock the door now and everything inside belongs to us. Later, we took advantage of the chaos and left. Finally, we negotiated and gave him some money and we finally got away. The stories of restaurants during that time provided me with a lot of material.

We have experienced many turmoils in Albania. The country was originally led by the Communist Party. After democracy, there were two parties, one was the Socialist Party and the other was the Democratic Party. These two parties have been fighting. Fights come and go, fights often. The biggest one is that because those countries are like this, Albanians are relatively simple-minded and everyone wants to get rich quickly. As a result, they conducted a fund-raising, the so-called pyramid-style fund-raising, which gives you very high interest. You give me 10,000 yuan. , I will give you 30% interest. It will continue to develop upwards and develop in an unlimited geometric shape, but it will collapse to a certain extent. Finally, the whole thing collapsed. Half of the money of the people in Albania evaporated overnight, and the whole country was in trouble. They opened the arsenal, and 1 million guns were released overnight. The opposition party mobilized the people and asked them to open the arsenal, and then the whole country rose up. But it is quite dangerous for us Chinese there. Now we are seeing these things in Libya. The time we were there was in 1996 or 1995. At that time, there was a construction company there called Nanchang Construction Company. This Nanchang construction company was the first They built a house in Kuwait, but Saddam in Iraq beat them away when he invaded Kuwait. Later, they went to Libya and built a house in Libya. However, after the house was built, they couldn't get the money because Libya was doing beauty treatment to them. Financial sanctions, their money cannot be exchanged for circulating money. As a result, when they arrived in Albania, the house was almost built and they encountered turmoil. Albanian mobs came in and robbed all their belongings, including more than 200 workers, all their money and all their equipment. Those people finally took refuge in the Chinese Embassy. At that time, the whole country was fighting, everyone had guns, and no one dared to come out. As a result, there was no food. I remember when we arrived at the embassy, ??the embassy official told us that the most troublesome thing now is that all the toilets are blocked, because the migrant workers came in and used newspapers to relieve themselves, which blocked all the toilets. That incident was quite big. In the end, the Chinese government evacuated its overseas Chinese, the Chinese military passed through Greece, and the Greek Navy sent warships to pick up the overseas Chinese in China. At that time, Tirana was not a seaport city, and Duras was still 50 kilometers away from Tirana. When evacuating overseas Chinese that day, the Chinese embassy had to organize people to take buses, first go to Duras, take a warship, and then transfer to a plane. go back. We have all experienced those things, and they are indeed terrifying. But I didn’t leave that time, I just stayed there. Because to be honest, we happen to have a large amount of goods over there, and they will definitely be lost if we leave. Later, someone from Xinhua News Agency told me that the problem would not be too big, because the EU and NATO were preparing to intervene at that time. As expected, less than a week later, eight countries, including Germany, France, and Italy, sent in coalition forces, which later brought the situation under control. Take control. We experienced such a thing there at that time. Anyway, this kind of thing happened all the time during those years in Albania, and I spent my time struggling with this kind of thing.

But there is another feeling in Albania, a particularly familiar feeling.

Because when we were young, we always watched Albanian movies, such as "Footprints", "Better Than Die", and "Broad Horizons", so we always had a familiar feeling when we arrived in Albania. In my first year in Albania, I once went to a border city , that city is next to Greece. It was night when we went there, but after we went there, after entering the castle, we saw a tree over there with a statue of a girl underneath. Later I asked what the statue of a girl meant, and I was told that the statue of a girl was The statue of Mira in "Better Die Than Surrender" is the prototype of the protagonist in the movie. I thought this was quite interesting at the time, because I had seen the movie "Better Die Than Surrender" in the 1970s. It was a very distant memory. I went abroad in 1994 and came into contact with the original character in the movie. I thought it was quite interesting at the time, so I thought this might be a moment for literature. Because when I left China, I thought I would never be exposed to literature again, but at that time I remembered that it turns out that space is a relative thing. Instead, it will be found in literature. At that time, I felt that I had been out for such a long time, and it turned out that literature had not been forgotten mentally. But I didn’t know how to write at that time.

Then another thing happened. In 1998, when I was about to leave for Albania, I was kidnapped for a while. At that time, we had been doing business in Albania for several years, and everyone knew about our company. It was a weekend. I was at the beach, and suddenly someone called and said that I wanted to come over to buy medicine. Because we were preparing to immigrate to Canada, a call came over and said that we wanted to buy a large amount of medicine, so I came back. As soon as I came back, I was fooled. The young man took out his pistol and wanted to kidnap me. He called a lot of local people, all with masks on their heads, and took me away with a submachine gun. He kidnapped me and put me in a basement. I was detained there for a week, which was a very difficult day. But he didn't die later and was rescued by the police. These things later became material. I wrote all my experiences in the book. But there is one thing that left a deep impression on me. At that time, I was dead, I was tied up all day, and my head was covered with tape. One day, I felt a little air flowing in from the air-raid shelter, and there seemed to be a little smell of grass. Later, I heard the birds chirping again, and I felt that I might not be too far away from life at that time, and that there was freedom outside. Under such circumstances, I had an impulse in my heart. If I could survive, I would definitely write about this experience. Later, I was surprised that I still thought about writing even though I didn’t know whether I could survive. Later I learned that writing is a very important thing in my heart. At that time, I felt that making money and business were not important, and I could give up on those things, but I still thought of writing. Later, I got lucky and immigrated to Canada after I was released.

Go to Canada, start over, and stay there ever since

I came to Canada in February 1999, because when I was in Albania, I and my relatives were alone. I did it there. When I went to Canada, I took my wife and my daughter with me. This time I took a whole family with me and the responsibility was even heavier. We arrived in Canada in February, just after the Spring Festival. When we arrived in Canada, the weather was as cold as minus 20 degrees Celsius. I didn’t expect it to be that cold. We originally agreed that an immigration lawyer would pick us up, but the plane might be late that day and the lawyer didn't come. Fortunately, I had stayed in Albania and had no problem with the language. I later told the taxi driver, I said, take us to a hotel closer to Chinatown to stay. In this way, without knowing anyone, in Toronto, Canada, I first went to the hotel, and then started my immigration life step by step.

After arriving in Canada, we started over. When we were in Albania, we were in the pharmaceutical business, but after arriving in Canada, we couldn’t do medicine because Canada is a highly developed place and has very high standards for pharmaceuticals. , will not use Chinese medicines at all. Then I started to make some small commodities there, because we, Wenzhou people, may not be able to do other things, so it might be a little easier to do a small business, and people like us can’t do professional work. We always like to be free and do business. A little bit freer. I was pretty lucky. I started the business after about five years of business there. It was very hard at the beginning. I remember that after I got there, I started from scratch. I studied first. I was in the newspaper. I saw an advertisement saying that a Chinese company was looking for someone to do warehouse management, so I went there. In fact, it was also to learn business. Now that I think about it, I gained a lot from that time. The boss’s surname was Liu, and he was a Shanghainese, he was already very old at that time, over 60 years old. People like them had a very hard life, working all day long from morning to night, and it seemed like the old society. When we came here, we were just like apprentices, and we had to eat You have to wash the dishes for him after dinner. I felt very uncomfortable when I first went there, but then I thought about it and it was very good for me. By washing dishes for an old gentleman, I removed all my vanity. This old gentleman turned out to be very interesting. He got cancer when he was in his sixties, but his business was still there. I had already started my own business at that time. He told me one day that he said that Xiao Chen and I already had cancer. I said, how could you have cancer if you are in such good health? He said it would take up to ten months for a doctor to make a diagnosis. He said that in ten months the doctor allowed me to live a better quality of life without having to work so hard on myself.

He said he lived a good life during those ten months, but I saw that he was still doing business during those ten months, and he wanted to sell the business to his wife. But this gentleman was in relatively good health. He later took some medicine, and after ten months he was still in good health. As a result, he had to explain to people when he met people all day long that he was supposed to die in ten months, but still You have to explain to people that you are not dead. But a year and a half later he died. This incident touched me. Later I thought about it, why should I do business? I always have a purpose in doing business, but this old gentleman ended up being so confused that he died. At that time, I remembered that I should think about doing something, so from that time on, because my own business was doing well, I slowly gathered my energy and returned to writing.

Because I have been abroad for more than ten years, and I am abroad, so far away from China. I don’t understand the development of Chinese literature. Fortunately, there is a Chinese language environment in Canada. There are many Chinese newspapers, such as "Min Bao" and so on. There is also the Internet, so you can learn about the situation in China. There are also some writers there, including a fellow countryman of mine. , is quite famous in China, his name is Zhang Ling. He has written well and is also a role model for me. I started writing in 2005 and wrote the first novella. Later, the name was changed to "Abductees' Story" and was published in "Contemporary". Later, it was published in "Harvest", People's Literature, and Chinese Writers. I also published a few books, and I was relatively lucky. Later, the leaders of the publishing company and the magazine paid great attention to me. I was able to come back after leaving literature for such a long time. After doing business for such a long time, I was able to come back. As a small businessman, if I didn’t return to writing, I would probably be just like the small boss in Wenzhou, playing mahjong and spending my whole life like this. But after I returned to writing, I felt that this step was still the right one. I still have a lot of things to do, and I can still write a lot of things. Because I have experienced a lot outside, and I have a lot to think about, and I can write a few more books.

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Chen He was born in August 1932, from Mei County District, Meizhou City, Guangdong Province. Member of the Communist Party of China. News Editor. At the age of 16, he joined the Chinese guerrillas and served in the army for 30 years. After resigning from the People's Liberation Army in 1978, he successively served as chief of the Broadcasting Management Section, chief of the Propaganda Section, director, and director of the station. In 1985, in order to change the history of Meizhou people who only listened to relay radio stations for more than 10 years, he prepared to establish Meizhou Radio and served as the director of the editorial office of Guangdong People's Broadcasting Station's Mei County relay station. He initiated the first self-collected, self-edited and self-broadcast radio programs in Hakka. In 1988, he organized the Meizhou Television Station and served as its first director. This ended the history of Meizhou people being unable to hear self-operated radio broadcasts and unable to see self-operated TV programs. He has been engaged in news and propaganda work for more than 40 years. He has published more than a thousand articles of various types on central, provincial and municipal radio and television stations, newspapers and magazines, and won more than 20 provincial and municipal journalism awards. He is the author of the revolutionary memoir "Valley Radio" and the novel serial "Mountain Road". "Wanwan" and "Footprints" were published in 2003, and published more than 10 papers including "Discussion on the Ways to Develop Mountain Television". Edited and reviewed more than 30 million words of radio and TV news, special topics, and literary and artistic manuscripts. He edited and published the memoirs of railway soldiers "Unforgettable Years", participated in the editor-in-chief of the revolutionary memoirs "Red Journey" and "For Tomorrow", and co-edited "Yan'an Radio Wave Direction" and other works. During his tenure as director of the TV station, he organized the filming and participated in the editing, review and production of the first and second episodes of the TV series "World Hakka Friendship in Meizhou", as well as "Yin Na Ling Guang", "Historic City Meizhou" and other films, which all won the city's first prize. In recent years, he has participated in many provincial and municipal photography exhibitions, and won awards for "Eternal Light", "Qinhuai River" and other works. His photographic work "Water Lily" was included in the "Expo of Works by Famous Chinese Calligraphy Masters"; in 2003, "Eternal Light" was included in He compiled the album "Expo of Contemporary Chinese Paintings and Calligraphy" to commemorate the 110th anniversary of Mao Zedong and was awarded the Excellence Award; "Overflowing Colors and Gold" was selected into the book "Treasure House of Chinese Calligraphy and Ink Art". On June 28, 2003, he won the honorary title of "Contemporary Chinese God of Poetry". 96 China "Furong Cup" Poetry, Calligraphy, Painting and Seal Grand Prix won the Poetry Excellence Award.

Male, Han nationality. Born in 1937 in Puning City, Guangdong Province. College degree, economist. He has successively served as Secretary of the Party Committee of Shantou Huashan Electronic Devices Company, General Manager and Secretary of the Party Committee of the Pharmaceutical (Group) Company. During his tenure at Huashan Electronics Company, he dared to reform, turned losses into profits that year, and made profits of nearly 30 million yuan for five consecutive years. In 1985, he was awarded the title of "National Determined Reformer" by the ACFTU and won the "May 1st" Labor Medal. After serving as the general manager of Pharmaceutical (Group), he pioneered and forged ahead, promoted the development of the pharmaceutical group, and won the title of "Advanced Worker" in the city.