February 2019
Intermediate to advanced
95 pages
1h 34m
English
Bo Guagua has told acquaintances that he was still on good terms with Heywood when they last met for a drink in Beijing in mid-summer 2011 and discussed the prospect of going sailing together.
But by this stage Heywood was telling friends he was depressed and worried about the tense atmosphere that had developed between him and the Bo-Gu family.
He described an “extraordinary feudal world” within the Bo household in which servants and hangers-on would swear celibacy in order to serve the family. He also talked about Bo Xilai's sinister “enforcers”, a shadowy group of ex-spies and security agents who were sent to threaten or “deal with” real and perceived enemies; he said Gu had even tried to force him to divorce his wife to ...