Bullets and Opium

by Liao Yiwu

  The students, arm in arm, stood in the middle of the street between the crowd of locals and the soldiers. The stalemate continued for a long while. The soldiers got out of their trucks and shouted a few words before starting to shove, pull, and punch. I couldn’t stand it anymore! I had repressed my anger for too long and now it surged up in my head. I yelled, “This can’t be! This can’t be! We can’t let these sons of bitches with guns keep on murdering innocents! Compatriots, we have to all fight together to stop them from committing any more crimes!” I rushed over to the truck nearest me. There happened to be a piece of cloth over the fuel tank. I yanked off the cloth and took out a match I had on me, struck the match, lit the cloth, quickly opened the cap on the fuel tank, and stuffed the burning cloth into the tank. A tongue of fire crept along the cloth. Tongues of fire burst out and climbed into the air seconds later. In less than a minute the whole truck was in flames, with fire shooting into the sky.

  You were very quick and efficient.

  I guess my quick hands and feet made up for my immature head. Then I turned around and went home.

  Didn’t you hide?

  Why should I hide? I was young and didn’t think that I had done anything wrong. I didn’t even think it was particularly serious. Several days after June 4, we started working again. When I was in Tianjin for work, they came to arrest me.

  I think there were seven of them. That day the leader of that work site in Tianjin said, “Please go over there and help me move something.” When I got there, I looked around and saw a group of police standing in a circle smoking. They had been waiting for a while. They began by asking, “Do you know why we’ve come to get you?” I said I knew why. “That’s good,” they said. “Don’t make a scene; just come along with us!” They escorted me back to Beijing to a police station not far from my home, where they interrogated me.

  Was it a secret trial?

  I suppose so. Anyway, there was no audience and my family wasn’t there. I suppose they weren’t notified.

  Later, when I got the written judgment in jail, I saw that I had been found guilty of counterrevolution and arson and had been condemned to death with a delay of execution. With just one piece of paper, a few people decide a man’s fate.

  At least you survived. Many others didn’t.

  Yes, those who survive can hang on for a long while. That mighty man Deng Xiaoping, didn’t we survive him? Jiang Zemin hasn’t got much longer to go, either. Me, well, I’m not even forty yet. I’ll live to see the day when the people of June Fourth are politically rehabilitated.

  That will definitely happen one day. You’re certainly the most naïve June Fourth rioter I’ve ever met. What came next must have been a long stretch of reform through labor.

  That was hard to take. Before I went to prison, when I was in a work unit, what bothered me the most was having someone order me around all day long. In prison, not only did I have to accept the orders of the people in charge, I also had to accept the beatings. My life was even worse than any animal’s. During my whole time in prison, I cried only twice. The first time made a big impression on me. When I first got there, the jailer found an excuse to punish me. He locked me up in solitary, an extremely low and narrow cell. There was nothing but a wooden bed in there, about three feet wide. You needed to bend your head to stand up. Even turning around wasn’t easy.

  In front of my nose was a window the size of an outstretched palm. The glass was broken and there were some tangled dead vines growing into it. It was cold then, almost Spring Festival time. There was no day and no night in that doghole. I couldn’t even smell the outside world. One day in the distance I heard a snatch of a song from the Cultural Revolution–era opera Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. Something like “We cross the immense forest, climb up through the snowy fields; our courage reaches the starry skies above.” Some people must have been practicing for an entertainment program for Spring Festival. I was cold and lonely. I didn’t know when I would ever get out of that little cell, or what new punishment might await me after I left it. My parents were in poor health. Would I ever see them again? Would I ever be able to marry a woman and bring her home to them? For all I knew, I might not even be capable of having children. When I thought of all that, my throat tightened and I started to cry.

  I was in solitary for more than ten days, but it felt like more than ten years. I left a lot more mature. I seemed to have hit bottom. If I could handle the “little cell,” what did the “big cell” have that I couldn’t take?

  Most of the other prisoners in the big cell were in there because of June Fourth. We were a bunch of pretty similar twenty-somethings, like a little grove of trees just sending out tender young leaves. Everybody talked to relieve the boredom. Everything was great when we were young: going to jail, committing crimes, and smoking opium. We had a good time fooling ourselves. I was a very simple kind of person. If everybody else thought a certain way, then I would think that way, too. But year after year of an endless stream of next winters and next springs, my beard turned yellow and my eyes got blurry. Seventeen years went by. I got out of prison. This year I turned thirty-eight. Those fucking butchers are still there sitting on top of the world. Do we ordinary people dare even say one half of one “No!” to those corrupt or profiteering officials? I’m just angry with myself for being so shameless that at my age I’m still living with my old father and mother. I really am a good-for-nothing.

  My father is over eighty. My younger brothers and sisters are married and have children of their own. Making a living isn’t easy. We are an ordinary Beijing family. We don’t have any special family background or any money. In August 1995 they demolished our old house and resettled my family elsewhere. My residence at the time was prison, and since the government allocates new housing according to the household registration system, I wasn’t allocated a place to live. My parents’ apartment is 492.8 square feet in area. The room for me is just 97 square feet. Normally, someone my age would be married and have kids by now, and I would be helping my folks live a carefree life. But now they’ve been supporting me without compensation for nearly twenty years. They’re in their declining years now, and I am still a burden. Do you think I can live a carefree life? What can I do? I didn’t want it to be this way.

  My mother suffers from facial paralysis. She was going to have an operation, but when she heard I was going to be released, she was afraid to have it because the hospital is so expensive. When I had just returned to society, someone got me a part-time job sweeping the streets for 100-plus yuan a month. With the cost of living being as high as it is in Beijing these days, 100 yuan isn’t even enough to keep a dog fed, never mind a human being. So I thought it over and decided not to take the job. I spent so long in prison wasting my life, I didn’t learn any life skills. A big guy like me, staying home all day, not daring to go out because going out costs money. I don’t mind not having money for food or clothes, but with Beijing being so big, doesn’t it cost money to ride the bus? If you walk a long way, won’t you get thirsty?

  I can’t keep on going like this. One of my siblings found me a job watching bicycles. I was impatient and went to the work site that same day. They asked about my situation and I was upfront about it. They were dubious and asked, “You really went to jail because of June Fourth? You stayed in there for so long?” They seemed to feel very strongly that it had been wrong to send me to prison. They went and talked among themselves for a while. Finally, they told me that I was young and strong, and they didn’t need my services for the time being. “Parking lots don’t make much money and the pay is low,” they said. “We’ll find an older guy who can pass the time here while making a little money. It’ll be better for both parties. Why don’t you go on home now and we’ll notify you when we need you.”

  * * *

  Changing the tape, I turned to Dong Shengkun.

  “Do you need to do the next one right away?” Wu Wenjian blurted out. “I’m afraid to take a breath.”

  “
Let’s take an intermission and have something to eat,” I said quickly.

  Wu Wenjian sighed. “We rioters, even though we live in this same city of Beijing, get busy with our own daily lives and rarely see one another. Today, thanks to Liao Yiwu, we have gotten together, so we should raise a few extra glasses.” With that, we all stood up and clinked glasses of erguotou. Wu filled his up again and made a special toast to Zhang Maosheng and Dong Shengkun, saying in a loud voice, “You two have suffered hardships!” To show his respect, Wu went bottoms up first, followed by Zhang Maosheng. Dong Shengkun hesitated. “I still have to ride my bicycle home. My old mother is waiting for me at home.”

  So that no time would be lost, everyone attacked the food. Finally, Dong Shengkun put down his chopsticks and said, “That’s about enough. I hope I am worthy of this meal.”

  * * *

  Dong Shengkun: To this day I am still proud of what the people of Beijing did back then. All those people exposed themselves to the heat in the open streets of Beijing during the dog days of summer. To support the students in the heat, many old women brought them mung bean soup every day on their flatbed three-wheeled carts. My family was the same way. Almost every day my mother sent a free box of eggs, cucumbers, and tomatoes. She mumbled as she went, “Mustn’t let those kids get sunstroke in this awful hot weather.” There was rampant inflation in 1989, but the ordinary person’s pay hadn’t gone up. I made 80 yuan a month back then and gave 40 yuan of it to the students.

  We didn’t know anything about politics, much less overthrowing the government. All we thought was that the words and actions of the students in Tiananmen represented the feelings and aspirations of the people. Doesn’t everyone want their own country to be healthier? The Communist Party says the same thing, but that’s like a cancer patient announcing that cancer is what they wanted all along and calling it perfect health.

  I had been in the army for three years. Later I worked making printing plates in a printing plant. You may not believe it, but when I was in the army, we were taught all the positive things: Love the Party, love the country, and love the people. In times of war, Huang Jiguang, who used his body to block the enemy’s gun, was our role model. In times of peace, Lei Feng, who always did good deeds, was our role model. But when the guns started firing on June 4, all that was turned upside down. Who could stand it?

  On the evening of June 3, I rode my bike to see my parents, who lived near Beijing [Workers’] Stadium. I hadn’t been able to go to work for many days, and they were worried about me. The situation had already become very dangerous by then. Soldiers were moving into the center of the city, and civilians were out on the streets to block them. It was chaotic. From my home in Liubukou, I saw someone shot dead for the first time in my life. The badly mangled flesh lying flat on the ground beneath the bridge terrified me. I thought over the situation and realized that I couldn’t move any farther toward Tiananmen. The rifle fire was like the spattering of roasting peas in a hot wok. It went on for a while, stopped, then started up again. Bullets don’t have eyes.

  I hesitated. Just as I was walking past the Cultural Palace of Nationalities on Chang’an Avenue, I could see, far away, a long line of tanks and armored cars rumbling toward me. Behind them was an even longer, endless line of military personnel transporters. The troops were moving very slowly. Their formation and the distance between their vehicles didn’t change as they edged forward. Nervous infantrymen with live ammunition were walking along both sides of the convoy to protect it.

  I’ve been a soldier myself, so I knew they weren’t playing around. The human body can’t stand up to iron. Many Beijingers were watching. People started getting incensed. Someone was shouting, and then people started charging into the middle of the street. Many people were yelling and cursing. I parked my bicycle and told people to stop insulting the soldiers. There was nothing they could do. They didn’t want to enter the city, they didn’t want to shoot, but they also didn’t dare to defy orders.

  I’m not brave like Wang Weilin, the Tank Man, but I couldn’t let them drive straight in and slaughter indiscriminately the innocent people in the square. So I gathered up my courage and worked together with everyone to block the military vehicles. I even approached one of them, trying to melt the soldiers’ resolve. Sitting in the vehicle was a gentle-looking army major. In a loud voice I tried to persuade him and his troops not to turn their rifle barrels against the people, so that future generations wouldn’t hate him. He repeatedly sighed and waved his hand at me. What he meant was Don’t be foolish, I understand what is going on better than you do. When I looked closer at the soldiers, I could see that many of them had red around their eyes, as if they had been crying.

  I went for broke, yelling even louder. I had never been so articulate in my life. I said that I had been a soldier, too. We had been comrades in arms, in the same trenches. “If you obey orders and open fire at random, accidents might happen, resulting in death or injury for your very own brothers and sisters. The protesters are standing up for our country in its hour of danger. They’re not doing it for themselves. They’re doing this for you, during a national crisis, out of fear that you’ll go down in history as evildoers. Turn around and go back, or drop your weapons and walk away. Don’t just shoot because you can’t stand to be insulted. The people are yelling insults at you because they feel this intensely. Why do they feel this so intensely? They don’t have any personal grudge against you, so why would they be against you? It’s because they can’t confront Li Peng. They can’t meet the arch-criminal. If you take offense and start firing just because of a few words, it will be murder. The life and death of the people depends on your finger on the trigger. Are the divisions among Chinese people so irreconcilable?”

  The officer was moved. Initially, soldiers with live ammunition were standing in a circle around the tank, on hair-trigger alert, ready for anything that might happen on the street. But now, after that talk with the officer, he switched out the soldiers standing guard on the outside and replaced them with others who did not have live ammunition.

  At that point I turned around and spoke to the crowd that was gathering all around and hurling insults at the soldiers. “Everybody, be reasonable. Control yourselves. Any sudden moves can only make things worse! The soldiers are not to blame. Soldiers have to obey orders. No matter how foolish the orders are, they still have to obey them. If you insult them, there is no guarantee that they won’t feel some sudden impulse and start shooting and killing everybody. There is no need for that.”

  Only after the two opposing sides relaxed did I get on my bicycle and ride away. As soon as I got to my parents’ home, they started crying, so deeply worried were they about me. My mother saw specks of blood all over my body. “Those bloodstains are from the blood of other people,” I told her, but I was puzzled: How had all that gotten on me? That night we didn’t sleep. I don’t think anybody in Beijing slept.

  During the day on June 4, my mother and father watched me in shifts. They wouldn’t let me go out, but I was itching to go out all day. At six p.m. I saw my chance and went. My mother yelled after me, like, a dozen times, but I pretended to be hard of hearing. Never had I imagined that when I looked back, after having pedaled awhile on my bike, that I would see my father following me like a secret agent. “What are you doing following me?” I yelled at him. “I’m not a little kid!” When my father heard this kind of talk from me, he looked embarrassed. He turned around and rode off in the opposite direction.

  I kept riding straight ahead. When I reached the Chongwenmen intersection, I could see flames lighting up the sky in the distance. As I got closer, I saw army vehicles on fire. The two in front were already up in flames. It was very hot, so I dodged around them and went behind the third one. The street was full of people blocking the vehicles, all in a state of wild excitement, moving their arms, screaming, and cursing. Standing in the crowd, my anger flared and I shuddered. I needed some way to release my anger. I heard a voice by my ear, “
Set the tires of this son of a bitch on fire!”

  As if driven by an invisible force, I went to the back seat of the vehicle and found two rags. Someone—I don’t know who—had taken the cover off the fuel tank. It was easy. I put the cloth in the fuel tank, let it soak, pulled it out, lit it with the fire that was burning on the ground, and threw it at the wheels.

  I was at a loss for what to do. A piece of cloth fell on the ground. Another was sticking to the tire. It burned for a while, then burned down to cinders and then unexpectedly went out. While I was waiting there, the vehicle didn’t burn.

  When I went home, I didn’t take my unsuccessful attempt to burn a military vehicle seriously. I went to work as usual for a few days and then was caught. That was on June 10.

  Did you have any accomplices?

  No. As for how the truck burned after I left, I really don’t know. I did want to burn a military truck. At that moment everybody was in a rage, and the crowd of angry, confused people completely blocked the road. Probably everyone there wanted to set those military vehicles on fire.

  On the morning of June 28, my eyes dark from several sleepless nights, I was taken to the Beijing Municipal Intermediate People’s Court for the trial in my criminal case. It took about an hour. I didn’t say anything. The lawyer’s defense was that when the accused burned the military vehicle, society was in chaos, and the crowd, including the defendant, didn’t really know what was going on. He hadn’t been watching television and so didn’t know that Mayor Chen Xitong had proclaimed martial law. He kept on saying the defendant is an army veteran with a good military record and that he hoped that the court, in its sentencing, would consider these mitigating circumstances.