“Actually, [at that time] when a person left school and went out on his own to face life’s cruel reality, everything you did, from eating to showering, depended on you, and you alone, because you no longer had the support of a work unit or the national [system]. When I lived [in the Yuan Ming Yuan area near the Old Summer Palace] with Mou Sen, the police would often come to find us. They thought we were very strange and would observe us for such a long time. No one rented rooms back then. We were just two [independent] young people, and they didn’t know what we were up to… They thought it was so odd. I would show the police officer my paintings, as well as some illustrations, hoping to clear his mind of any misgivings. Otherwise he would always spy on us. But we became a problem for them anyway. All of a sudden, here were these two young people living there. China at the time was only just beginning to have migrants [moving from the countryside to the city]. They called us mangliu, a person who blindly drifts from place to place.”