Originally Written by Wang Dingding and Li Weilian
Translated from Chinese by Ma Jun
Li:
Betty is calling us again. She would like to show us varieties of exhibits in Buchanan House. Viewed from inside, this house looks really like a building with 4 rooms on the first floor surrounded by a loop corridor and 3 rooms upstairs. Since the corridor is roomy enough, one side of it is set aside for kitchen room to brew coffee. And the other side is used as exhibition room. Many glory medals and big photos taken when prize was awarded were displayed in the bookcases on both sides of the room. Of course, the most remarkable one was the heavy Nobel Gold Medal and 2-feet square wooden Certification with painting flowers underlaid. Betty told us that to appreciate her several decades’ service Prof. Buchanan duplicated the medal for her specially. During the week in the late of 1986 when awarding inauguration was held in Stockholm she was so excited that she laughed everyday in the following two months.
Wang:
Those 3 rooms upstairs are Prof. Buchanan’s study room. One room is included the other one. Prof. Buchanan was sitting on the coach waiting for me to finish “sightseeing”. I walked in and sat in the sofa on the opposite side to him. The study room was furnitured very warmly. There is a big fireplace embedded in the wall besides the sofa with much charcoal in it. A teapot stands between Prof. Buchanan and I. Many manuscripts and correspondence which are in progress were piled on it. That’s just for me to put my recorder on……
The interview designated for half an hour originally continued for one and a half hour. Sometimes Betty and Xiao Li’s chipper laughter came into my ear from the downstairs which reminded me that the interview had been overtime. I tried to put forward my questions as short as possible. Prof. Buchanan was talking in spirits. He didn’t seem to pay any attention to that at least two appointments in that morning had been delayed. We discussed into the depth and also very frankly. He is a pure-hearted thinker and doesn’t care for (mind?) frank criticism. When we inquired some details of certain question, his expression made me think of the moment my friend and I worked out problem sets in study group during college time.
Li:
Eventually Dingding came downstairs to get together with us. We shook hand with and said good-bye to the passionate hosts. Betty told me she had friends all over the world. She asked us not forget to visit her when we passed by next time. Mingming also had a good time. She found many little squirrels in the forest outside the Buchanan House. And the Macadamia Nuts she gave Betty as a present was one of Bettey’s most favorites.
Wang:
“Governor Hotel” is situated at the crossing of the 16th and N streets. I walked back to the Hotel alongside the 17th street after finishing 2 hours roam from the Capitol Hill to the White House. I was conceiving an essay about the linkage between Buchanan’s political economy, especially his reflection upon America’s constitutional spirit and the present age of 1998. With so many trains of thoughts thronging in my mind, as a result, I wrote this prose with Betty as the leading lady. Moreover, I couldn’t help taking the lovely little squirrel standing on the crossing of.1000 Constitution Avenue as my starting point. I believe truthfully this is a kind of writing style as well which helps thinking stretch into thinking and helps language revert into language.