by Linda Jaivin
While Hou was confined to the cultural offices, the ambassador, David Sadleir, brought Hou his meals himself and often stayed to chat. While Hou joked, ‘I had the most highly-ranked personal waiter in the world,’ he also confessed in a letter to Geremie and me that ‘I really feel a bit embarrassed about this. Even in your embassy, I’m a member of the privileged classes.’ The staff rigged out Nick’s office with a bed and video player.
In the embassy, Hou wrote several songs, including ‘Carry On’:
What are the melodies of love?
The acoustics of anger?
I cannot sing my grief,
I forgot long ago what happiness is.
We played too many games these past few years
We only just learned someone else made up the rules
I protest against the unfair rules
I refuse to play a game I’ll never win.
To carry on is my last remaining right
Don’t tell me to give it up
No matter what others say
We must carry on.
He also spent several days writing up his experience of the final hours on the square, completing the 5000-word manuscript on 20 June, three days before the official announcement of Liu Xiaobo’s arrest. Hoping that Xiaobo was still alive, and convinced that if he was, the publication of this essay could somehow help his case, Hou sent it through the diplomatic bag to Geremie and me, asking us to get it published in Hong Kong. It took a while for it to reach us, but when it did, we mailed it to a friend in Hong Kong, whom we asked to arrange its publication.
Hou had plenty of time to meditate on the meaning of the events that had occurred between April and June. In another letter to us, he wrote that he used to feel that, compared with Yang Xianyi’s generation, as well as the generation who’d experienced the Cultural Revolution, he’d missed out on something. ‘I don’t feel that way anymore. No generation ever really misses out. God is always arranging some program for us. Xiaobo had just a bit too much fun. People like us can only release our energies safely in open societies. Otherwise, we become like sticks of dynamite that blast open tunnels. While this may force a closed society to become more open, the explosion hurts a good many innocent people.’
Hou believed that ‘if it hadn’t been for the fact that in the end we were able to negotiate for the students to leave the square, I’d have to say that our hunger strike was a bad thing to have done. I’d have felt very guilty.’ The experience of the protest movement left him uneasy. What disturbed him most was that ‘For some people, pushing the soldiers to the point where they opened fire seemed like some kind of tremendous accomplishment.’
‘There’s not much I’m able to do,’ he concluded. ‘My only hope is that Xiaobo and the others can come through this alive. So long as they’re able to stay alive, we can deal with the future when it comes. As for myself, I don’t know what I can do here on the Chinese mainland except dream. Yet I would be sad to go…I can’t bear the thought of leaving the friends here with whom I’ve been through life and death itself. I’m more than willing to share in the knocks that fate has arranged for everyone.’ The letter ended with a gloomy meditation on the future of Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Towards the end of June, Steve Wasserman, who’d published the American edition of Geremie and John Minford’s anthology Seeds of Fire: Chinese Voices of Conscience in 1988, commissioned Geremie and John to do a follow-up that would put the protest movement into its cultural, social and historical context; the two of them invited me to co-edit the book. We decided to call it New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices.
I was still very emotional when, on 26 July, Mr Zhao from the Chinese embassy’s cultural section phoned to remind me that I had borrowed a number of books from their library some months before. I wrote him the following letter.
Thank you for your phone call this morning … I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye but I understand how you might have felt compelled to hang up when I called for the overthrow of Li Peng, Deng Xiaoping and Yang Shangkun.
I have decided not to return the books to you at this time. In fact, I am going to hold them hostage— if you can persuade your government to release my friends Liu Xiaobo and Wang Peigong from prison, where they are being detained for their role in the peaceful demonstrations for freedom and democracy that preceded the Peking Massacre of June 3–4, I will return the books. (This is conditional—if I discover that other friends have been arrested they will have to be set free as well.)
An additional consideration is concern for the fate of the books themselves should I return them to you. Today I read in the newspaper that the People’s Daily has called for the burning of books. As someone who loves books very much, I cannot possibly return to you volumes that could be in mortal danger…Even if that report was exaggerated, we do know that the thought police (you know, you call them the Public Security Bureau) have recently been raiding bookstores and book stalls in China. I do wonder what it is that makes your leaders so afraid of books? As we saw, with horror, on June 3–4, people who think and read are no match at all for people with tanks and guns.
Nick Jose had returned to Beijing the week before. His first letter to us after his return was titled ‘Notes from the dark side of the moon’. There were many urgent matters to attend to—friends in trouble who needed invitations to travel abroad, other friends in detention whose cases had to be brought to the attention of Amnesty International and other organisations. He reported that the Chinese Ministry of Defence had shown a propaganda film to foreign defence attachés featuring an interview with Liu Xiaobo. Xiaobo, Nick reported, ‘apparently looks okay—not visibly beaten or shattered’. He spoke about the last hours in the square along pretty well identical lines to Hou Dejian’s account, which struck Nick as a ‘relatively hopeful sign’. He said that he’d heard from Ah Xian and Guan Wei, and that they were all right. Gladys was in hospital, and Yang Xianyi ‘at a loss’. Nick concluded his letter with the appeal: ‘Send us some jokes.’
WITHIN days of Hou’s arrival at the embassy, Australian diplomats had informed the Chinese Foreign Ministry of his presence. Australia wanted a guarantee that, should Hou leave the embassy, he would not be arrested. The Chinese responded that, since Hou had done nothing illegal, no guarantee was necessary. When the Australians proposed that they’d be happy to fly Hou out to Australia where he could work on his music, the Chinese said there was no need for him to leave China. Given Liu Xiaobo’s fate—and the news that Gao Xin and Zhou Duo had been arrested as well—neither the Australians nor Hou were convinced that he wouldn’t be arrested on leaving the embassy.
China countered by claiming that it was illegal for the Australians to harbour a Chinese citizen. International law is, in fact, divided on this point. The general consensus seems to be that an embassy can refuse to give up a national to the sovereign territory if, as a result of having committed some political offence, his or her life appears to be in danger. Scholars of international law would watch the resolution of both the Hou case and that of Fang Lizhi and Li Shuxian with interest.
The Chinese were the first publicly to reveal Hou’s whereabouts when they told a delegation of visiting Taiwan scholars that he was free to come out any time. They explained that they’d refused to guarantee Hou’s personal safety to the Australians because this constituted an ‘interference with national sovereignty’. If Hou would only walk out of the embassy on his own accord, without ‘getting foreigners mixed up in Chinese affairs’, that would preserve ‘national self-respect’. Hou was welcome either to stay on the mainland or return to Taiwan as he wished.
Hou and Nick Jose in the Australian embassy, 1989. After two months in the embassy, Hou boasted, ‘I could tell you how many kilograms of milk can be squeezed out of an improved Australian cow.’ He still remembered this statistic in 2001.
Two months passed. Hou felt that the Australians had been very kind. No one had ever expressed any annoyance with him on account of th
e strains he’d caused in Sino-Australian relations. They even joked that there would be a special suite for him in the new embassy then under construction. But it was an accident that he’d ended up in the embassy in the first place. He wanted to go home.
In August, the Association of Taiwan Compatriots and the Reunification Committee of which Hou was a member provided a letter assuring him that he would not be arrested if he left the embassy. This did not entirely satisfy the Australians, who pointed out that neither organisation had the authority to make such a guarantee, but Hou decided to take the chance.
In a letter he wrote to me on 10 August, he said it had occurred to him that they might try to use him. ‘Although it’s true I didn’t see anyone killed, I’m not willing to act as their mouthpiece, either,’ he stated. ‘I’m guessing they won’t necessarily demand that I publicly support the government (they’re surely not that stupid).’ He figured that his value to the Communist Party was as a ‘living prop’ who could ‘demonstrate to people inside and out of the country how enlightened they are’.
On the afternoon of 16 August 1989, a senior Australian diplomat drove Hou back to his flat in Double Elms. An unmarked, dark-green Nissan with no licence plates followed them the entire way.
Cheng Lin’s family, who had decamped for Guangzhou shortly after the massacre, returned to welcome him home.
By August, many traders and investors had quietly returned to business as usual with China. Of the 139 nations which had formal relations with China, only twenty ever officially condemned the crackdown. The US was one of those twenty which had already begun to soften its stance.
Amnesty International and other independent groups came out with reports documenting the death toll in Beijing as at least one thousand, with hundreds more casualties in the provinces, and an unknown number of wounded, possibly more than 10,000. The statistics were horrifying, but less than the hyperbolic estimates bandied about by the media at the time of the massacre, as well by as some student leaders who’d managed to flee the country. Some commentators in the overseas, Taiwan and Hong Kong media responded angrily to these reports, favouring claims such as that by Wuer Kaixi, who had surfaced in France, that more than 120,000 people had been arrested or executed in the wake of the massacre and that several thousand had been killed in Beijing on 3–4 June alone. Wuer stated that Tiananmen Square had been awash in blood ‘two inches thick’ and claimed he’d witnessed the violent deaths of ‘many classmates and compatriots’.
Wuer Kaixi later wrote a long letter to Hou Dejian explaining why he felt he needed to say what he did, knowing it was a gross exaggeration, and asked for Hou’s understanding. Hou wasn’t impressed. He and Xiaobo had from the start tried to convince Wuer Kaixi and his peers that, in a democracy, the ends didn’t always justify the means—in fact, the means were part and parcel of the ends.
Hou hadn’t been home half a day when officials from the United Front, the Taiwan Compatriots Association and the Public Security Bureau appeared on his doorstep.
‘Central Television wants to interview you tomorrow. They want you to discuss your experience of the evacuation of the square.’
Hou shook his head. ‘No, thank you.’ He knew that they’d manipulate anything he said to their own advantage. ‘I’ve written an essay on this very subject,’ he told them. ‘It’s going to published abroad.’ Though Geremie and I had sent it to our friend in Hong Kong well over a month earlier, it still hadn’t come out. ‘I’d be happy for you to reprint that account in the media here,’ Hou told his visitors. ‘But I’m not doing any interviews.’
A wry smile twitched across one of the security men’s faces. ‘Put it this way, Mr Hou,’ he said. ‘We know all about the joint declaration you wrote with Liu Xiaobo and Gao Xin at the home of the Australian cultural counsellor. I don’t think we need to spell out the consequences for your friends, who are in our custody, should we decide to pursue the treasonous nature of this act.’
Hou swallowed drily. He had no idea how the police had come upon the declaration. We later found out that the tape had been in the pocket of the jacket Xiaobo had been wearing when he was arrested.
‘Right. When should we do this interview then?’
The following morning, 17 August 1989, reporters from Xinhua, the official news agency, Central Television and the People’s Daily crowded into Hou’s flat. When one asked ‘Was anyone killed on the square?’ Hou sensed that in this question lay the whole point of the interview. Carefully, he phrased his answer to say that while he had not ‘personally’ seen anyone killed, he had heard many reports about the number of citizens killed on the roads leading into the square. He related how he’d been carried out on a stretcher with a coat over his head and therefore hadn’t seen much himself. The interview lasted two hours. The reporters kept lobbing the same question at him. He realised that they were trying to trip him up.
Hou was aware that the interview would provoke fury. He would not only be the first famous person to appear to support the government line that no one was killed in the square, but also the first participant in the protests to do so as well. Yet he refused to lie about whether he’d seen anyone killed.
After the reporters left, he phoned me in Australia. He told me about the interview and said that he hoped I’d believe that he hadn’t lied.
‘Of course I believe you.’ I reminded him that I’d asked him the same question on 4 June, when he and Xiaobo first arrived at Nick’s place. He’d given the same answer then. We talked about Wuer Kaixi’s influential claims that the square had been awash in blood. We agreed that you couldn’t counter lies with lies.
‘On the other hand,’ I said gloomily, ‘don’t expect anyone else to believe you.’
‘I know. I’m going to cop a lot of flak. I can feel it.’
‘Good luck,’ I said. ‘And let me know how it goes.’
That evening, a heavily edited excerpt from the interview was broadcast on the news. Its focus was him saying that he had not seen anyone killed on the square. The print media followed up with longer, similarly slanted stories.
Hou knew he’d be criticised, but he wasn’t prepared for the full force of the volcanic explosion of bile, disbelief and fury that erupted, particularly in Hong Kong and Taiwan. And there was no way he could explain the circumstances under which he’d been blackmailed into the interview in the first place.
MANY of Hou’s friends and relations reacted to the interview with embarrassment, shock and denial. In Taiwan, where the interview was re-broadcast, his mother told reporters that the person on the TV didn’t look, sound or even gesticulate like her son. His brother Dewei concurred that it was probably faked.
On the other hand, his Hong Kong manager Kim Wong and his old friend Teddy Robin never doubted that Hou was telling the truth. As Kim said to me, ‘It was the media’s fault for labelling it the “Tiananmen Massacre” instead of the “Beijing Massacre” in the first place.’
Some media were sympathetic, even if they thought he was lying. Taiwan’s Youth Daily reminded readers that Hou was ‘in the devil’s hands’, reduced by fear for his life to a puppet of the Communist regime. Hong Kong’s New Daily, in an editorial titled ‘A Hou Dejian style “Rashomon”’ stated that Hou had been forced to lie as part of the deal struck for him to be able to leave the Australian embassy. That line was taken up by other papers across the Chinese world and even in Japan, where the Yomiuri Shimbun ran a similar account. I was relieved that one of the Hong Kong journalists I most respected, Fong So of the influential Nineties monthly, refused to condemn Hou. ‘We can’t ask him to say what we want to hear,’ Fong stated.
Undeniably, Hou’s statement was, as the South China Morning Post put it, ‘a propaganda godsend to the Chinese authorities’. Much of the Chinese-language media went straight for the jugular, condemning Hou as a ‘traitor’ to the cause of democracy, the students and his fellow hunger strikers. Some commentators belittled his accomplishments as a musician, saying his only talent had
been in self-promotion. Others blamed him for dragging Liu Xiaobo into the movement, unaware it had been the other way around; in their eyes, Xiaobo was a ‘real man’, Hou a mere ‘opportunist’ and ‘chameleon’. Playing on the fact that in Mandarin, ‘dragon’ and ‘deaf ’ have a similar pronunciation (long), Hong Kong’s Oriental Daily News called him an ‘heir of the deaf’— ‘Listening to the unbroken gunfire, he failed to hear a single bullet penetrating a single body’.
Many commentaries noted bitterly how much concern had been ‘wasted’ on Hou when his fate was still a mystery. The fact he’d taken refuge in a foreign embassy offended national pride as well. According to some reports, he’d fled to the Australian embassy even as the students lay bleeding on the square. He was self-serving, irresponsible— a ‘villain’.
The most vitriolic salvo came from the pen of none other than Hou’s old friend Luo Dayou. In a commentary for the Oriental Daily News, Hong Kong’s biggest mass-circulation daily, Dayou wrote, ‘Fuck your mother, Hou Dejian!’ He derided anyone who would make excuses for Hou as a ‘well-intentioned prick’ and accused Hou of ‘losing every last bit of face for Taiwan and the mainland’.
Of all the attacks, this one hurt Hou most of all. He’d always valued Luo Dayou’s friendship and frequently expressed great respect for his song-writing. Besides, Luo Dayou hadn’t been involved with the protest movement before the massacre. Nor had he participated in the Hong Kong Concert for Democracy. Hou, deeply stung, wondered what right Luo—who’d never even been to the mainland—had to take the moral high ground now.
