BEIJING MASSACRE HAPPENED 23 YEARS AGO

Editor’s Note: On June 4, people in Hong Kong and around the world will observe the 23rd anniversary of the 1989 Beijing Massacre in which China’s government and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) killed thousands of innocent people. Most of the victims were student protesters who had wanted a fairer, more democratic and less corrupt nation. They deserve to be honored and remembered – lest we forget!

HONG KONG -- A more important novel than Chinese author Ma Jian’s Beijing Coma (2009, Vintage Books, London, translated by Flora Drew, 666 pages) would be tough to imagine. Although fiction, it presents more truth than most news reports or magazine stories, especially those in China’s state media.

Through the memories of Dai Wei, a comatose man who took a bullet to the head during the 1989 Beijing Massacre, Ma tells of student protests that shook China’s government, the ensuing crackdown and consequences. Often it makes grim reading – just as lingering in China can lead to grim lives.

A former artist who painted propaganda signs and then worked as a photo-journalist for a state-run magazine, the savvy Ma, originally from Qingdao, China, has traveled widely. He closely watched the real student protests, as he does everything that happens in his home country. Seeking freedom of expression, he moved to Hong Kong and then Europe, settling in London.

Here, in an unusual sort of book review, we aspire to let the truth shine through by quoting from Beijing Coma. Mostly self-explanatory, these passages tell a lot about past and modern China. What kind of nation was it? How have things changed? What indignities and restrictions bind its people?

“ ‘Hey, I wonder what happened to the company’s stage designer, Old Li,’ my father muttered. Back in 1958, my father and Old Li were both sent to the same labour camp in Gansu Province.
‘You didn’t hear? He was skin and bone when he was released from the camp. On his first night back, he gobbled a whole duck, four bowls of rice and downed half a bottle of rice wine. He went out for a walk afterwards and his stomach exploded. He collapsed on the street and died.’

“One night, when the rain was beating down onto the plastic sheeting above our heads, my father glared at me, his eyes cold with fear, and whispered. ‘Don’t go over to the tree. The officers will take a note of your name. Remember. You’re the son of a rightist – you must learn to live with your tail tucked between your legs.’

“Two large portraits of Chairman Mao and Premier Hua Guofeng hung in the lobby. Below them was a freshly painted red box in which to post reports of political misconduct and bad behavior.

“ ‘You’ve grown up too fast,’ my mother said, her expression hardening. ‘Those decadent traits should have been knocked out of you long ago. Your father was poisoned by Western ideas. It’s his fault you’ve turned out this way. There are so many bad people around today, corrupting society with their bourgeois lifestyles. They talk about sexual liberation, sexual freedom – their only aim is to poison the minds of our youth, allowing imperialist countries to change China through peaceful evolution. If you don’t step up your political studies, you’ll end up on the wrong path.’

“He paused and stared at the screen again. ‘Look at those tall buildings in Shenzhen. How do people manage to live in them? You’d wet your pants before you had time to make it outside to the latrines.’ He finished his cigarette and spat a glob of phlegm onto the floor.

“ ‘I’m a biology student, and have taken courses in medicine so I’m not easily shocked. But I just can’t imagine how anyone could bring themselves to eat another human being. My father told me that, of the 3,000 rightists sent to the Gansu reform-through-labour camp, 1,700 died of starvation. Sometimes the survivors became so famished that they had to resort to eating the corpses.’

“Then she said that she was only a baby when the Cultural Revolution started, but when she was older, her parents told her that, during the violent years, corpses with bound hands and feet could float down from China into the harbours of Hong Kong every day.

“On 1 October every year, prisoners on death row were executed in celebration of National Day. With the improvement of surgical skills and the liberalization of the Chinese economy, any parties with enough money could now purchase themselves the organs of executed prisoners…. The demand for organs has risen recently, especially from foreign patients who can pay in foreign currency, which is good for our economy. So to improve efficiency and meet demand, the government has now permitted executions to be carried out in the hospital where the organ transplant will be performed.”

“ ‘The bastards!’ my mother says as soon as the police officer leaves the room. ‘They turn their guns on innocent people, then brand whoever gets shot a criminal. What kind of morality is that?’

“What I wanted to ask was: ‘Who exactly did the Communists liberate?’ After the so-called Liberation in 1949, the Party drove one of my grandfathers to commit suicide, forced my uncle to murder the other, and locked my father up in labour camps for 20 years. They claimed they liberated the peasants. But the only peasants I’ve ever seen have been so destitute they don’t know where their next meal is coming from.

“ ‘Don’t put your lives at risk,’ Bai Ling said. ‘You think that if you get killed by the police, you’ll become glorious martyrs. But your deaths wouldn’t change anything. The government would still be in control.’

“ ‘The Chinese people have been on their knees since 1949.’ Han Dan said. ‘It’s time they stood up and stretched their legs.’

“ ‘You have the heart of a wolf but the balls of a rabbit!’ I laughed. ‘You strode out into the streets yesterday and set fire to a copy of the People’s Daily, but now suddenly you’re quaking with fear.’

“The two women sit on the sofa, talking away until nightfall.
‘What kind of country is it that punishes the victims of a massacre, rather than the people who fired the shots?’ my mother says again.

“Under the dense, oppressive sunlight, the Great Hall looked like an immense coffin. The national emblem fixed to the roof appeared to waver in the haze. As the police lines shifted back and forth, the crowds surged and retreated.
‘Why won’t the government leaders come out and take the petition?’ the onlookers said.
‘They’re terrified, that’s why! They don’t have the guts to show their faces in public!’ others shouted out.

“I scanned the audience…. Of the 3,000 students sitting in the lecture theatre, I guessed that about 200-300 were government informers….

“The bright morning sun shone down on the green poplars lining the pavement and on the green caps and uniforms of the armed police who were blocking the street ahead. The police had formed a human wall, about 40 rows deep. From a distance they looked like a belt of trees on the edge of a city.
Local residents packed the pavements. Their cries of ‘Long live the students!’ echoed off the surrounding buildings and the pedestrian flyover. There was a sense that the student movement had become a people’s movement.

“Liu Gang grabbed a megaphone and yelled, ‘You must be exhausted, comrade policemen. We’ve come onto the streets today to ask for justice and truth. We’d appreciate your support! The Communist Party is very powerful, but it’s riddled from top to bottom with corrupt, money-grubbing officials who abuse their power for personal financial gain. We’re not motivated by selfish interests. We’ve come out here today for the sake of our country’s future, and to support your noble profession!’

“At eight the next morning, Bai Ling was broadcasting the hunger strike declaration that Mou Sen had rewritten. ‘We endured cold and hunger in pursuit of the truth,’ she continued, ‘but the armed police beat us back. On bended knees we begged for democracy, but the government ignored us. As our student leaders press for a dialogue, they find their lives are now in danger…. We don’t want to die. We want to live, We’re young and we want to enjoy our youth and study hard. There is still much poverty in China, and we want to work hard to eradicate it. We don’t seek death. But if one person’s death can allow many people to live better lives, then…’ By the time she reached the end of the speech, she was sobbing out the words.

“Under the bright overhead sun, the hundreds of hunger strikers lying curled up on the Square looked like shrimps laid out to dry. The student marshals stood in cordons around them, keeping curious onlookers away. A hunger striker held up a will he’d written on a sheet of brown paper, and a crowd quickly gathered round to photograph him.

“The boy offered me a cigarette, took a puff of his own and said, ‘The government won’t dare use force. We’ve got the whole country behind us. Everyone wants democracy.’
‘It’s precisely because everyone wants democracy that the government will crack down on us,’ I said.

“People only care about money these days. If you don’t bribe the doctors with red envelopes of cash, they won’t bother to treat you…

“Deng Xiaoping has mobilized a third of China’s regular army forces. More than 300,000 soldiers have encircled Beijing. That’s a larger military force than was sent to attack Vietnam.’

“There’s nowhere to hide in this country. Every home is as exposed as a public square, watched over by the police day and night. If we want to create a country in which everyone can feel safe, we’ll have to do much more than give the government a fright….’

“ ‘My wish is to have freedom of thought and to see an end to this political dictatorship,’ Tian Yi said. ‘I don’t want to have to live in fear.’
‘That’s easy. All you need to do is go abroad with Dai Wei.’

“I was in the emergency tent, near the Goddess of Democracy. I saw students being killed right in front of me. There were corpses under Mao’s portrait, near the flagpole on the north side of the Square, and in front of the Museum of Chinese History. I managed to get a lift on an ambulance that was taking casualties to the Children’s Hospital. I was relieved to leave the Square. But when I walked into the hospital’s emergency room, I saw pools of blood everywhere. I had blood up to my ankles….’

“ ‘Even if you did have a home to go to, the Party would always have a key to the door.’

“As I moved away, I could hear San Bo in the distance, shouting through my megaphone: ‘We’ll get you in the end, Li Peng! You bastard! We’ll get you!...’

“In the last glow before dark, I watched the crowds rush frantically back and forth between Chairman Mao’s portrait and the white Goddess of Democracy. They looked like swarms of nervous ants sensing the impending approach of a tidal wave.

“Yu Jin ran up to us. His clothes were splattered with blood. ‘Look. I picked up this bullet cartridge myself. The soldiers are shooting to kill. They lifted their guns and sprayed the streets with bullets, then tens of bodies dropped to the ground. My racing bike was crushed flat by the wheels of a tank.

“The distant gunfire sounded like a string of firecrackers exploding. I felt as though we were like crabs being tossed inside a scorching wok.

“They’re shooting everyone in sight,” Chen Di said. ‘Every bulletin we receive brings news of more deaths and injuries.

“More tanks approached the Square from the east, followed by line after line of soldiers advancing like rows of moving walls…. The gunfire resumed again. Several people were hit. Some of them staggered backwards, some fell and rolled about in agony. Others dropped flat on their stomachs and lay still….
‘Fucking hell! They’re executing people in cold blood!’ I looked away. I couldn’t bear to watch. My heart was thumping.

“I looked over at Tiananmen Gate and saw thousands of soldiers pouring out from the black arch beneath Chairman Mao’s portrait. Reflected firelight flickered across their metal helmets. The fires blazing in the distance looked like funeral pyres burning in a graveyard.

“I waited. I knew the tank must have driven over some people. As the smoke cleared, a scene appeared before me that singed the retinas of my eyes. On the strip of road which the tank had just rolled over, between a few crushed bicycles, lay a mass of silent, flattened bodies.”

“An elderly female doctor shouted, ‘If any of you are with people who have minor injuries, take them home now! The army will be turning up here soon to arrest the injured.’ ”

“ ‘A woman called Wang Xing went to the Square a while ago and unfurled a banner that said ‘Reverse the verdict on the Tiananmen Movement’. She was arrested, declared ‘criminally insane’ and sent to one of those Ankang mental hospitals that are run by the police. They only release you from those places once they’ve tortured you so badly that you really have gone insane.’ "

For more information: www.beijingcoma.com

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