Over breakfast, she asked Xi if he was disappointed.

“Disappointed? To go there”-he lifted his eyes skyward–“to see them and to be disappointed? I am an orphan of the Long March. I survived the Cultural Revolution. I was trying to grow potatoes and sugar beets for six years in the shadow of the Great Wall. Upheaval has been my whole life. I know disappointment.

“You have been to a banquet, and when you come home to your starving village you are disappointed that they do not celebrate your return? This is not disappointment. We have lost a minor skirmish. Examine the…disposition of forces.”

I love this passage from the book. One of the many many things I love about it is when I think of him, for six years, trying to grow potatoes. To think of a mind like that lying stagnant, lacking the environment to flourish. I think of repressed people throughout time, women, blacks, the people of Russia for so long, etc. etc. etc. History is full of repression. Who knows what genius has been crushed? Genius for science, arts, compassion. Lights we will never see. And it helps me strive to be the best me I can be.