The Fat Years

by Koonchung Chan

  He blames me for not telling him who his father is, and I can understand that. He actually curses my friends using the Cultural Revolution term “monsters and demons”! He says they are dubious characters who could have a bad influence on his future. He laughs at me for resigning my position as a judge and says that I’m too stupid to be his mother.

  If that 1983 crackdown on “spiritual pollution” and crime had not made me understand clearly that I was not suited to be a judge, I would still be part of the Public Security system today. I think I’m constitutionally unable to adapt to this political system. I studied law only to please my father.

  My father can probably be considered one of the first judges in the New China. In the 1950s, he participated in the drafting of the new Constitution. I remember when I was a child and my father came home, Mother would tell us not to make any noise. We were all afraid of my father. He never once gave me a hug. My mother was probably more afraid of him than anyone else. I remember my mother never smiled if he was around. After he died, she became another person. She was reborn, and even her voice seemed louder. My mother didn’t say much about the things my father did, but no doubt he must have persecuted and ruined quite a few people.

  My father himself was persecuted and put in prison during the Cultural Revolution. He was released only when he became ill. In 1979, after the college entrance examinations had been reinstated, I graduated from Number 101 Secondary School. Fully aware of my father’s wishes, I listed the Peking College of Political Science and Law as my first university choice. I wanted nothing more than to become a judge after graduation. I thought that, like my father, I was a prime candidate for being a judge in our republic.

  My mother had told me in private that my personality was not suited to studying law. She told me to study science and engineering, and keep out of trouble. At the time I didn’t agree and felt furious with her. I wanted only to make my father happy and figured that my mother was a housewife with no practical experience or understanding. People are so strange. When people treat us badly, we do what they want us to do; when people treat us well, we pay no attention to them at all.

  During the trial of the Gang of Four, I watched the televised proceedings with my father. Father’s temper had grown even worse after the Cultural Revolution; he was very hard to get on with and he often swore at us. He didn’t achieve the success he longed for in his later years and he took his hatred to the grave.

  While I was in college, people had their Rightist status removed and many who had suffered miscarriages of justice during the Cultural Revolution received political rehabilitation. Even the Gang of Four were given a trial, and state-appointed lawyers to defend them. I was full of hope for the future and utterly confident that the Communist Party intended to create a society governed by the rule of law.

  I graduated in 1983 and was assigned to a county-level court under the Beijing jurisdiction to serve as a legal clerk-secretary. That was when my nightmare began.

  I was twenty-two years old when I arrived at my work unit in August. Everyone else there had just finished studying Party Central’s August 25 document “Decision on Severely Cracking Down on Criminal Activity.” They briefly explained the “spirit” of the document to me and then they let me get to work. I’d always hated to see the guilty prosper and the innocent suffer, and so I was naturally very much in favor of the Party and government’s policy of severely and rapidly punishing criminal activity according to the law. I was certain I would not be soft on criminals. What I didn’t know, however, was that the “severely and rapidly” that I had in mind was not the “severely” or “rapidly” that they practiced. Maybe I hadn’t had enough psychological preparation, and perhaps my idea of the rule of law was too far removed from reality. In any case, the problems began as soon as I started work.

  The correct procedure in criminal cases was for the Public Security Bureau to arrest people, the prosecutor’s office to bring charges, and the judges to decide the verdict and the sentence. In order to process cases rapidly the Public Security Bureau, the prosecutor’s office, and the legal division each assigned two people. All of us worked in an office of the Public Security Bureau. The arrest, investigation, decision, and the sentencing all took place practically at the same time. In those days, nobody much understood the function of a prosecutor. Our judicial unit assigned two people of the lowest secretarial rank—a retired army officer who was politically reliable but who had had no legal training and me, someone who had just graduated from law school and who was also a young woman. In this way, the chief and deputy chief of the local Public Security Bureau basically controlled everything.

  I was ready to fall apart by the end of the very first day. In every case, big or small, the accused was given the death sentence, and not one of the crimes involved murder. Robbery received a death sentence, petty theft received a death sentence, swindling received a death sentence, and no one paid any attention at all when the accused produced solid exculpatory evidence.

  There was one case in which a young man had sexual relations with a young woman, her family came after him, the two sides had a fight, and they all received minor injuries. The girl’s family went to the Public Security Bureau and had the boy arrested. The boy’s family knew that this was potentially a very serious situation for him during this crackdown period. The whole family went over and knelt down in front of the girl’s house to beg them to withdraw the charge, but the girl’s family refused. When the case came to our six-person group, the Public Security chief asked us, “What is the sentence for the crime of hooliganism?” “This crime does not merit the death penalty!” I exclaimed as soon as I could. The other five group members stared at me in silent rebuke. In the end the boy was given an indefinite sentence of labor reform in far-off Xinjiang Province.

  After court that day, the deputy chief of Public Security came over to us clutching a report and said, “Other places are all executing ten or more people by firing squad … Just look at Henan Province. Zhengzhou, Kaifeng, and Luoyang all executed forty or fifty people at the same time. Even a place like Jiaozuo executed thirty at the same time. But we haven’t even reached double figures. What do you say we should do about it?” Everybody felt under great pressure.

  At that point the retired army officer who had been assigned with me said, “The hooligan intentionally injured others. His sentence was too light and out of step with the spirit of Party Central.”

  “Then we’ll just change the sentence to execution and say he made it onto the list.” Turning to me the deputy chief added, “Female comrade, you should not be so kindhearted.” His reprimand really knocked me back—that’s how weak I was.

  That weekend we shot ten people in the back of the head. I was ashamed of my cowardice and felt so angry about my compromise. What good is the law? Is this a society that practices the rule of law? I debated with myself. When I returned from the execution grounds that day, I set out on a path from which there could be no return.

  In the next round, the court secretaries went together with the district police officers to various locations to investigate cases and arrest people. Then we took the accused to the Public Security Bureau in the county seat for trial. I had already made up my mind: for any crime that didn’t deserve capital punishment, I would say so outright. Since there would be a record that one of the two judicial representatives was opposed to the death sentence, the others in the group would be unable to insist on it and would have to change the sentence. But in this way there would be fewer death sentences, and everybody would be afraid of criticism from higher up. Members of my work unit phoned me and tried to dissuade me from acting the way I was, but I just ignored them.

  Later on, I came to know that even if I had not had an “accident,” my work unit was already planning to transfer me. One night in the county seat, an army vehicle ran into me. This was a common occurrence. In rural areas, army vehicles sped around like crazy and often ran into people. If civilians were killed or injured
, they just had to accept their fate. But even though it was a common occurrence, usually if an army vehicle ran into a member of the Public Security authorities, there would be endless wranglings back and forth between these and the military. In my case, however, the army took me straight to Number 301 Hospital, and afterward my work unit didn’t inquire further into the incident.

  After leaving the hospital, I handed in my resignation and became a person without a work unit. And my mother didn’t have a bad thing to say about it.

  I became a privately self-employed person by opening a small restaurant with my mother. We mostly served her Guizhou-style goose. In the 1980s, Beijing was a fascinating place, the heart of an era full of promise. Our first regular customers were natives of Guizhou, especially scholars and writers who had moved to Beijing. They brought other Beijing writers, artists, and scientists and foreigners to eat and to talk. My mother loved to entertain guests and I loved the excitement. Everybody called me Little Xi. We expanded our restaurant and renamed it The Five Flavors. In the autumn of 1988, I met Shi Ping and fell in love.

  He was a poet. There is nothing at all poetic about me, but we both cherished genuine sentiment. Shi Ping said that someday he would certainly receive the Nobel Prize for literature, and I said I would certainly accompany him to Sweden to attend the award ceremony. That was the happiest time in my entire life.

  We didn’t really have too much time alone together, though, because Shi Ping liked to spend time with his poet and artist mates. There were quite a few women around him, but, surprisingly, I didn’t mind.

  Every night The Five Flavors was full of our intellectual and artistic friends debating issues, drafting and signing manifestos, competing jealously for each other’s affections, getting drunk and throwing up. The police visited us frequently, but my mother was very adept at getting rid of them.

  In the spring of 1989 Shi Ping and a group of his friends went to Lake Baiyangdian and stayed a few days—they had been “sent down” there during the Cultural Revolution. I came back to Beijing early. I had the feeling Shi Ping was seeing one of the other women, so I found an excuse to leave. I guess I didn’t want a direct confrontation. That night the authorities closed our restaurant down. They said a group of academics had issued some sort of political statement there a few days earlier, with foreigners present.

  I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, but I actually went to see Ban Cuntou. He was in my class at university. He grew up in this big courtyard and could be considered a member of China’s Red aristocracy. His whole demeanor implied that this world had been created through his force of arms and therefore it all belonged to him. There were many people like him living in Beijing’s big, old-fashioned courtyards. I’d heard that he was the highest-ranking official among my former classmates, so I went over to ask his advice. When we were in school, he often hinted that I ought to become his girlfriend. He thought that every woman should like him, but I couldn’t stomach his attitude. This time I was really stupid to think that I could take advantage of my “old flame” status to see if he could save my restaurant.

  I was in a rotten mood in the first place, and I was overconfident about the drinking capacity I thought I’d built up at the restaurant. That night we didn’t drink Chinese rice wine, but we had something called Rémy Martin. I drank too fast, wasn’t used to foreign liquor, and before I knew it I was plastered … I remember Ban Cuntou pointing at the TV reporting on Mikhail Gorbachev’s visit and asking me, “What do you think about Gorbachev?”

  When I woke up, I was in bed and he was sitting on the sofa in his underwear reading the paper. I realized I had slept with him. To get even with Shi Ping? I don’t think I’d have done it for that. Ban Cuntou had deliberately got me drunk. “Well, this time you finally got to me,” he said when he saw I was awake.

  “Ban Cuntou, you’ve gone too far this time!” I said angrily.

  “Well, you’re no St. Joan the virgin martyr either,” he retorted.

  Ever since college, I’d always known that guys like him were smooth-talking and insincere, so I shut up. With a terrible headache, I went to the bathroom, had a quick shower, got dressed, and left without saying another word.

  In the days after that, everybody was busy going to Tiananmen Square. Shi Ping wrote a new poem in support of the students. I was still furious with Shi Ping, and we were both busy with our own activities on the Square.

  Then they started shooting at us, and Shi Ping and I were separated.

  A couple of weeks later, I was arrested, but they let me go when they found out I was pregnant.

  Actually, I was already three months pregnant. I was so caught up in the June 4 events that I didn’t even notice. At the time I believed it was Shi Ping’s child, but later on I didn’t dare say for certain.

  I lived with my mother and waited for the baby. The big courtyard was full of people from political and legal circles, who all knew of my situation; we had to put up with a lot of tongues wagging and fingers pointing behind our backs. Fortunately, after June 4 everyone felt they had just survived a calamity and they didn’t want to be too nosy and attract attention.

  I didn’t hear anything from Shi Ping for a long time. He escaped to Hong Kong in secret. Later on, he went to France and married a Frenchwoman. He never even sent me a single letter to let me know he was safe.

  When my son was born, I named him Wei Min, giving him my last name. When Wei Min was twenty years old, he changed his name to Wei Guo, exchanging the word “people”—Min—for “nation”—Guo.

  Our restaurant was closed for a year and a half, but the following autumn, we received a notice that we could open again. Did Ban Cuntou help me? I don’t think so.

  Mother and I became extremely busy reopening the restaurant and trying to make a living. To begin with, business was very slow. The national economy was in decline, and many people were out of work in Beijing. President Jiang Zemin had let it be known that he intended to crack down on private businesses like ours. The people who had made up our most solid customer base couldn’t satisfy the thought-police investigators, so their work units fired them, and they didn’t have either the money or the spirit to eat in restaurants. A lot of our regulars had been foreigners, but they had not yet returned to China. Needless to say, the winter of 1991 was a cold one.

  In 1992, Deng Xiaoping made his “southern tour” in support of continued economic Reform and Openness, and then Beijing’s financial conditions started to improve. At that time we worked particularly hard on our business and didn’t go in for any more “salon” activities. My mother and I read up on some new recipes, remodeled the restaurant inside and out, trained a new cook from Guizhou, and business gradually picked up, but it was exhausting work. My mother handled the lunch crowd while I took care of my son in the daytime, then I handled the dinner crowd. Gradually some of our old customers started drifting back. They would talk for hours, taking from five thirty to midnight to eat dinner. Sometimes I would sit beside them and listen, but I would close up shop at midnight—no more talking until dawn. Freedom of speech at the dinner table slowly returned in the late 1990s. By listening to them talk and by reading some of the banned books from Hong Kong they gave me, I slowly began to understand what modern Chinese history had really been like, especially the things that my mother and father had been through.

  Our Taiwanese and Hong Kong compatriots also started coming back, along with some foreigners. Peter, or Pi-te as we used to call him, arrived around the middle of 1997, when Hong Kong was returned to China. I called him Little Pi. He was slightly younger than me and very shy. He was a reporter stationed in Beijing, working for a foreign news agency, and he especially liked me to tell him about the Tiananmen democracy movement of 1989. After we’d known each other for a year, he very formally asked me to be his girlfriend. I thought he was decent, and nobody else seemed to be after me at the time, so I agreed. I knew that I wouldn’t be with him for a lifetime—I didn’t love him that much—so I re
fused to move in with him. Later, when he was transferred home, he asked me to marry him, but I turned him down.

  At that time all my friends loved to discuss contemporary politics and criticize the government. That’s why I cannot adapt to today’s situation. Suddenly in the last two years, since China’s so-called Golden Age of Ascendancy officially began, not only has everybody stopped criticizing the government, but they have all become extremely satisfied with the current state of affairs. I don’t know how this transformation came about. My mind is a complete blank because I recently spent some time in a mental hospital and the medicine they gave me has left me muddleheaded. My mother tells me that one day I came home and started shouting, “They’re going to crack down again! They’re cracking down again!” She says I didn’t sleep all night and kept mumbling to myself. Early the next morning, I went out into the courtyard and started cursing the Communist Party, cursing the government, and cursing our neighbors, shouting that the law courts are all bullshit. And the courtyard was full of representatives of the Chinese legal system! Not long after that, I fainted, and when I woke up I was in a mental hospital. My son, Wei Guo, said he had arranged it all. He said he had saved my life by preventing me from shouting all that crazy nonsense. Otherwise, if a crackdown really did start, they would probably shoot me in the head.

  When I was discharged, everybody around me had already changed. When I asked them what had happened while I was in the hospital, they wouldn’t tell me. I don’t know if they were feigning ignorance or if they really didn’t remember. What astonished me most was their reaction when I started to talk about the past, especially the events around June 4, 1989. They didn’t want to talk about it; their faces went blank. When we talked about the Cultural Revolution, all they could remember was the fun they had when they were sent down to the countryside—it had all turned into some sort of romantic nostalgia for their adolescence. They didn’t even know how to “remember the bitter past and think of the sweet future” like the Party had taught them. Certain collective memories seemed to have been completely swallowed up by a cosmic black hole, never to be heard of again. I just couldn’t understand it. Had they changed or was there something wrong with me?