All the secrets in the world are hidden in dreams—and that includes ciphers

All the secrets in the world are hidden in dreams—and that includes ciphers is the line Rong Jinzhen wrote when ordered to submit a self-criticism for interpreting dreams at Unit 701. In a single sentence, he joined the private, unruly material of dreams to the hidden structures he studied in cryptography; what his superiors demanded as an apology instead became a declaration of how he understood his work.

The setting of the remark

Every Thursday afternoon, Unit 701 held a political meeting. Its agenda could include explanations of policy, newspaper readings, or open discussion. During those discussions, colleagues would sometimes draw Rong Jinzhen aside to interpret their dreams. He had no great expertise in the subject, but found it difficult to refuse people face to face, and tried to turn their tangled nocturnal thoughts into coherent explanations.

The practice brought him to the attention of a deputy division chief responsible for political education. The deputy, described as strongly left-wing and prone to drawing the worst conclusions, saw dream interpretation as feudal superstition. Rong was sharply criticized and told to write a self-criticism. The demand placed an ordinary act of collegial curiosity under political scrutiny: the issue was no longer only what dreams might mean, but whether he was permitted to interpret them at all.

A self-criticism that refuses its purpose

People in the cryptography division disliked the deputy and advised Rong to write a few lines and put the matter behind him. Rong tried to follow that advice, but his idea of a brief, concluding statement differed from theirs. His submission consisted of one sentence: "All the secrets in the world are hidden in dreams and that includes ciphers."

The line does not apologize or concede that dream interpretation is superstition. Instead, it places dreams and ciphers in a shared domain of concealed meaning. Its compressed form makes the statement especially pointed: the document meant to display political correction gives no conventional admission of error, only a proposition that recasts the disputed practice as relevant to cryptography.

Reception and significance

The deputy did not accept the sentence as compliance. He read it as evasion, as though Rong were trying to justify dream interpretation by claiming it had something to do with cryptography. He also took its confidence as arrogant, interpreting it to suggest that Rong alone understood the connection. Although the deputy knew little about cryptography, the idea of allowing something as individual as a dream to go unchecked disgusted him. The self-criticism seemed to mock and humiliate him, and he rushed from his office to confront Rong in the cryptography division.

The episode turns a bureaucratic form into a clash over what counts as knowledge. Rong offers no developed theory in the document; the force of the line lies in the connection it asserts, joining the enigmatic patterns of dreams to the concealed messages of ciphers. Its importance in the scene is also practical and immediate: rather than ending the reprimand, the sentence intensifies the deputy’s anger and carries the dispute from the meeting room into a public confrontation.