With a week to go before the election, October surprises are expected. Several have been aimed at Trump already, and they've been quickly debunked. But today, the Daily Mail has a juicy story about Kamala Harris's running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, and, in the interest of fairness, we're reporting on it so you can decide if it has any merit.
According to the report, Walz had a secret romance with the daughter of a high-ranking Communist Party official during his 1989 teaching stint in China. Jenna Wang, now 59, recounts how Walz wooed her with thoughtful gifts and late-night encounters in his modest staff accommodation at Foshan’s No. 1 High School in Guangdong Province.
The couple naturally kept their relationship under wraps, aware that public displays of affection were off-limits given Wang’s father’s powerful position in the Chinese Communist Party, which forbade relationships with Westerners. But behind closed doors, their bond grew as they shared tea, George Michael songs (hilarious), and quiet moments together, fueling the then 24-year-old Wang’s dreams of marriage and a fresh start in the United States.
Here's more.
No proposal was forthcoming from the future Minnesota governor, however, and the shame of being treated 'like a prostitute' eventually left Wang feeling angry and suicidal, she claims.
'Tim was very passionate and very romantic. I can still remember dancing with him to our favorite song, Careless Whisper,' she told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.
'The fact we couldn't touch or kiss in public just made it all the more exciting and intense when we were finally alone.
'We were deeply in love and I wanted to marry him and start a family. When it didn't happen, I felt very unhappy and sad. Tim's behavior was very selfish.'
Walz's time in China is already a source of controversy after he misleadingly claimed in interviews and congressional transcripts that he was in Hong Kong when the Tiananmen Square protests erupted from April to June of 1989.
A few months after arriving in Foshan, Walz reportedly became enamored with Wang, whom the paper describes as a "highly educated English language teacher at the nearby No. 8 Middle School."
Their romance began when she attended one of his lectures to improve her pronunciation, and Walz, then 25, leaned in and whispered, “You are very beautiful.”
"Tim was very handsome. I loved his eyes and his big mouth," Wang told the Daily Mail. "We talked afterwards and he was very complimentary about my English."
"My colleagues couldn't speak whole sentences but Tim told me that if he closed his eyes and listened it was like being back in America."
Wang had a friend on the same teaching staff as Walz so she was able to gain access to the exclusive school where she could visit him in his one-bed staff digs.
Over the weeks that followed the lovebirds grew closer, walking in the park and going to dances in the evening where there was less chance of being spotted by communist snoops.
They avoided overt shows of affection in case it got back to Wang's father Bin Hui, who was an important CCP official and chairman of a labor union in her native city of Guilin.
Walz would travel to Hong Kong and Macau on the weekends – cities that were more or less inaccessible for all but the Chinese elite – and bring back Western-style luxuries like blue jeans, Ray-Ban sunglasses and jewelry.
"He couldn't sing and when he tried to dance he found it very hard. I could tell he was in the military," Wang said. "But we talked for hours and hours, we stayed in bed, we had sex. He continued to buy me gifts. I could never stay overnight because of the social conventions. It was very repressive. Couples walked around the city like robots."
Walz’s long-distance romance with Wang continued when he returned to the U.S. for the summer, as he kept in touch through letters detailing his life in Nebraska. Under Walz’s guidance, Wang even sent a passport photo and personal details to an address in the U.S., hoping this was a step toward securing her visa.
When Walz returned to China in 1992, Wang resigned from her esteemed teaching position, believing she was on the verge of a new life with him. But tensions surfaced during a trip through South China, where Walz’s public displays of affection—like attempting to feed Wang a slice of pear—drew unwanted attention.
"People were staring at us. I tried to reject it because I was very afraid. Teachers were supposed to set an example," she said.
The couple made sure to book two hotel rooms wherever they stayed but on an overnight train journey Walz insisted that Wang sleep in his cabin.
The conductor shone a flashlight on Wang in the middle of the night and started to admonish her, only to retreat when Walz, afforded more respect as a westerner, woke up.
When the pair reached Hainan Island, known for its tropical climate and beach resorts, Wang was ready to confront him about their future plans.
Walz responded by suggesting that Wang was more interested in a US passport than marriage.
'This was very offensive. I said to him that it is both or nothing,' she said.
'I wasn't giving up my life and my position to move to Nebraska, a cold place in the middle of nowhere that most Chinese people had never heard of.
'I was giving it up to be with Tim, to get married and start a family.
'Knowing now that he wasn't going to marry me made me feel cheap and common, as if I was being treated like a prostitute.'
The next morning Wang slipped out of their hotel and took a taxi to a remote clifftop where she says she contemplated throwing herself off rather than returning to her old life in disgrace.
According to the report, a spokesperson for the Harris-Walz campaign didn't respond to a request for comment. So, as of publishing time, we don't even have a denial for the story.
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