by Liao Yiwu
Then came the May 1 and May 4 demonstrations and the People’s Armed Police mobilized hundreds of thousands of soldiers. To counter that, several million people from all over mobilized themselves. It looked like a tyrannical government was going to be drowned in a sea of people.
That’s when they completely lost control. People say that there were demonstrations in dozens of cities, with tens of millions of people going out on the streets. People wanted reform, democracy, and human rights.
A graduate student in biology, Shen Tong, invited me to take part in the Capital Autonomous Federation of University Students, the major coordinating group at Peking University. Yang Tao was the chair and Chang Jing the vice chair. I was the liaison with outside groups, responsible for hosting visitors and communicating information. In all my life, I have never been so busy. I only got two or three hours of sleep a night, and I had no time to eat at all. I often felt dizzy and light-headed while hosting Western journalists; it must have been low blood sugar from not eating enough. On the eve of Gorbachev’s visit, we debated at the base of the Monument to the People’s Heroes whether we should temporarily pause the demonstrations to free up the area so the state could save some face. A dozen famous intellectuals also came to urge us to give up our hunger strike. The rock stars Cui Jian and Hou Dejian also came, and Liu Xiaobo.
A “Democracy University” started up in the square. Divisions among the student leaders sometimes led to fistfights. There was no way to keep track of all the things that went on. Nobody knew, and nobody could say what might happen the next day. What should they do next? They just kept on arguing. They were still arguing on the night of June 3 until about ten p.m., when we heard gunfire. That made everybody shut up for a while.
That day I was nearby in Xidan, when I got a telephone call from headquarters in the square, ordering me to take a few people to see what the situation was like near Xisi, to the west. It turned out that the trucks of martial law troops had been blocked by the crowds. The crowd had rushed forward to reason with the soldiers, urging them to withdraw and turn their guns around on the tyrannical government. It was a scorching day, and the armor plating of the military vehicles was burning hot. The soldiers were stuck inside, soaked in sweat, some hanging their heads and seeming to be suffering from heatstroke. Civilians came forward to give them water, Popsicles, fruit, and bread, moving them to tears. They said they hadn’t understood the true situation before setting out. They said that, as an army made up of the “sons and younger brothers of the people,” they would absolutely not fire at patriots.
But after that, they not only started shooting but killed many people—although I also saw many soldiers who abandoned their military vehicles, threw down their weapons and ammunition, and ran away. Some even gave away their weapons and ammunition to the people and told them how to resist. I suppose they must have been tried by secret military tribunals afterward. During that night of slaughter, I ran to many intersections. Bullets were flying, injured people were sprawled everywhere on the ground, while still others kept coming to help them, picking them up and carrying them to the hospital as bullets rained down. I went to Fuxing Hospital and then to Beijing Children’s Hospital and saw there, with my own eyes, several dozen bloody corpses.
It was a scene from hell, with heavy gunfire sounding outside the walls. Inside the walls, physicians and nurses were frantic, rushing in and out. Amid the moans of wounded patients brought in earlier, the freshly wounded streamed in. By late that night Tiananmen was in the hands of the martial law troops. The only thing left for me was to hurry back to Peking University and pass on the news. I was too indignant, too exhausted, and too overwhelmed. In the dormitory, even as I sat straight up and talked and talked, I started snoring. My pants were bloodstained. In all my running around, I didn’t know where the blood had splashed on me.
Early on the morning of June 4, a ceremony to mourn the dead was held on the Peking University campus. Chang Jing and I were in charge of hanging up funeral scrolls. Suddenly, an armored car braked sharply to a halt at the university gate. Two soldiers hopped off, smiled, and asked for directions. They acted as if, according to the old line, the army and the people were still as close as fish and water. Everyone was furious. Hundreds of people came rushing from all directions, surrounding and punching the two soldiers. Just as it looked like they were going to be killed, Chang Jing and I, without exchanging a word, dove into the crowd, pulled them off the ground, and rescued them.
At the time, any little mistake was an open invitation to further repression. During those days, there was wailing, like the cries of ghosts, everywhere in the Peking University dormitories. I decided to go home, which was not far away, in Sanyuanqiao. There was a roadblock there, too. Martial law troops were at all the intersections, so I went through some narrow alleys and circled around for six or seven hours before I finally got home. I locked the door tight, burrowed under my bed covers, and cried for a long time. Then, without telling my family, I packed a few simple things and prepared to flee.
Surprisingly, I got on the train without any trouble. I got to Shijiazhuang, and then, after some transfers, I made it to my relatives in the county capital near there. After hiding there for a while, I was depressed and bored and decided to go south to Sichuan. I even climbed Mt. Emei, one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains. During this period, many people escaped abroad and many others were captured. After another three months had passed, I received a letter from the Party branch general secretary of the Peking University philosophy department telling me that the troubles were over and I could come back to school.
They weren’t tricking you?
Peking University generally had a tradition of protecting its students. Many people, however, felt that things were not so secure. In the months that followed, many people from other schools came to me privately to collaborate on a mourning ceremony for the dead of June Fourth. I couldn’t resist participating and continuing my liaison work with foreigners. I was arrested on May 31, 1990. I had just returned to Beijing and I hadn’t even settled into my chair in my dorm room when there was a knock on the door. The philosophy department Party branch general secretary was standing there. I had to go with him. First we talked for an hour at the school security office. Then I was put in handcuffs, loaded into a prison van, and sent to the Haidian District detention center.
Even though I was very anxious before entering the prison, I forced myself to be calm, with the righteous composure of a martyr prepared to be executed in a Communist novel. I went through the main gate, then a second gate and a third gate. Each gate was narrower than the last.
Then suddenly I was kicked. “Remove his belt!” someone shouted. Then it was my pants. I stood there naked as they completed their inspection. They didn’t return my clothes right away but just threw them into a jail cell. In the cell were twenty other bare-assed guys. As soon as I entered, they surrounded me, making funny noises, and then they pounced on me. Kicks rained down as I rolled back and forth. I got a sharp kick in the chest that hurt like somebody was drilling my heart. I nearly spat blood. I collapsed onto the floor.
That is about what happened to me when I entered prison, too.
It hurt for several days. I heard a jailer say that a boy’s urine can heal traumatic injuries, so I was constantly dreaming of drinking a boy’s urine until I would wake up dying of thirst and couldn’t get any water to drink. The rule of the cell was that every new arrival needed to be initiated with a beating.
It was long, slow torture after that. I was surrounded by petty thieves and scoundrels. They all laughed at my university student’s way of talking. Naturally, the June Fourth slaughter was not long past, so everyone was sympathetic. A habitual thief told me that to support the patriotic student movement, he had taken part in the Beijing city-wide thieves’ strike.
Eating, drinking, sleeping, and shitting were all difficult. The cell was too cramped and the prisoners were all packed in tight. We were rotting: one person to
uching another person, flesh touching flesh. There was no space between us. Sweat, smelly feet, and urine stank up the cell, but after sleeping there for a few nights you didn’t notice it anymore. I had been a cleanliness freak. In my dorm room I couldn’t stand even a spot of dust on my bed.
Now not only was I put in a stinking hole, I had to get up close and personal with those scabies-infested dregs of humanity, too. Surprisingly, after sleeping hugging my legs for a hundred days, I hadn’t developed any similar problem. Everyone said that this counterrevolutionary’s skin must be made of some special material, to be the only one who’s not itchy when everyone else is.
Just five days after that, I suddenly felt an unbearable itch, which made me sit up in the middle of the night and scratch myself furiously. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. First it was small red spots, then small welts, then a series of blisters. Finally my whole body was covered with ulcers. My arms, stomach, genitals, and buttocks started to swell and continuously oozed yellow liquid. The government wouldn’t issue any medicine. Toothpaste didn’t help.
We could only use the sun to kill the disease little by little, during our exercise breaks. But sometimes the prison guards were too lazy, and we didn’t get a chance to go out for more than twenty minutes at a time, and scabies would rage because it was so damp. Everyone was constantly scratching themselves from head to toe. Everyone was covered with ulcers, making us unrecognizable. People would roll around on the floor or rub up against the walls. Some couldn’t bear the itch and squealed like pigs. When we were taken for interrogation, flies would buzz around us every time we moved our heads. Even the interrogators couldn’t stand the sight of us. Holding their noses, they went to the prison authorities. After that they started thorough cleanups of our cells and sent us out to get washed up and gave us sulfur ointment, which we slathered all over our bodies. After two or three nights, a layer of skin peeled off.
I don’t remember what my “crime” was. I signed a confession and a written pledge and then my case was considered closed. I was unexpectedly lucky to be released after 209 days.
But I didn’t get off so easily the second time I went to prison. That was in May 1995. I had only been “free” for four years.
It’s hard to escape one’s fate.
I was careless and got on the Ministry of Public Security’s blacklist. Peking University had expelled me. I couldn’t study and I couldn’t find work. I could only hang out at home and rely on my parents for support. In 1992, I got to know Liu Qing of the New York organization Human Rights in China and I helped him send foreign donations to the families of June Fourth victims all over China. I knew that was a little dangerous, but I couldn’t get rid of my June Fourth obsession. Later, when the authorities discovered what I was doing, they called me in to discuss matters over a cup of tea. I answered frankly: “Yes, I forwarded some money. The money helps the state appease the people’s grievances.”
For several years I traveled to dozens of cities and personally distributed several hundred thousand U.S. dollars to over 600 family members of victims. Each person actually only got a little, maybe $200, $300, or $400. Some received $600 or $700. I was running around so much that I got completely exhausted. I often felt dizzy and vomited on long-distance bus rides. One time I fainted.
What got me in trouble was a woman. One time, right in front of me, she called Wang Dan and talked with him at length about June Fourth. That’s how she and I got acquainted, and we stayed in touch off and on for about two years. Then she suddenly invited me to go to Guangzhou on vacation, saying that a “big boss” would arrange free room and board for us. I thought that was a little strange, so I politely turned down the invitation. She called a few days later to say that the police were following her and that she wanted to hide at my place.
“I’m just a ‘clay Buddha’ crossing the river myself,” I said obliquely. “I’m not sure I can make it, either.”
“The tiger’s mouth is at once the most dangerous and the safest place,” she answered.
“B-b-b-but . . . ,” I stammered, panicking.
“But what?” she said. “I’m coming over right away.”
“I’m going to visit an old lay Buddhist disciple this afternoon.”
“I’ll go with you,” she said.
“You don’t believe in the Buddha,” I answered. “It won’t do you any good to go along.”
To which she replied: “How do you know I don’t believe in the Buddha?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I agreed and we went together to the home of a retired scholar, actually an old lay Buddhist disciple, and talked for over half an hour with him. Then she insisted on going with me to my place. “My place is too messy,” I said. “Some other time.” But she kept insisting, and somehow I couldn’t refuse.
As soon as we entered, I asked her to sit down. While I was in the kitchen getting tea and making something to eat, she was inspecting my bookshelf. Among my collection of books were some notebooks that listed contributions received from abroad and when they had been delivered. My handwriting was very messy, but she took out the notebooks and inspected them, page after page, very focused, as if she were doing some kind of research.
I hurried back to stop her, saying, “This is private stuff and you shouldn’t be reading it.”
“What do you mean private?” she asked flirtatiously. “What is there that people shouldn’t see?”
“Give me back my notebook!” I yelled.
She continued the flirtation act, hiding the notebook behind her like a lovely and innocent girl: “No, I won’t give it back! I just won’t give it back!” I went into a blind fury. I pounced on her from across the table, held her down, and pulled the notebook away from her.
Shortly after she left my home, the Joint Defense Command came saying that they had a report that I had assaulted a woman and attempted to rape her. It was a disaster. I couldn’t have defended myself even if I had had a hundred mouths. They first took me to the Chaoyang police station, and then to the Chaoyang detention center. They made threats, demanding from me the details of our sexual encounter. There was nothing to explain, so they gave up on that. Then they made a thorough search of my home and confiscated all my notebooks, diaries, letters, and address books, and the large quantity of materials on the democracy movement that I had gathered over the years.
Then the intensive interrogations began. “Why doesn’t that woman who had me arrested for indecency show her face?”
“Li Hai, don’t beat around the bush with us,” said the policeman. “Your problem now isn’t indecency. You need to tell us everything about your ties to foreign reactionary organizations. How much intelligence did you provide them? How much did they pay you? How much money did you pass along on their behalf? Be frank with us and you won’t have any problems.”
“What nonsense is this? I don’t know what you are talking about.”
At least, thanks to my first time in prison and all the sufferings I had endured, I understood what I was getting myself into. I had to resist firmly. Because once I loosened my lips, many names and addresses would follow. Not only would many people be in trouble because of me, but the severity of my crime would also increase. The police raged at me several times and nearly beat me to death. Finally they put the leg irons on me, and that usually means the death penalty. I wore them for a full year. I grew emaciated, like a ghost.
I had been captured on May 31, 1995. My court date was May 30, 1996. With no evidence and no confession, I was convicted of revealing state secrets and sentenced to nine years in prison. I was ultimately transferred to Liangxiang Prison in Fangshan County, where nearly 2,000 prisoners were held. I was treated terribly there, tied up with hemp rope and shocked with electric prods. But they still didn’t squeeze any secrets out of me. There was no reduction of sentence: I was released on May 30, 2004, after nine full years; that is 3,288 days. After I got home, since it was nearly June 4, I was put under house arrest for nine days. So the total comes
to 3,297 days of lost freedom.
Now I have high blood pressure, conjunctivitis, and gallstones from doing hard labor day and night in prison. My memory has deteriorated. The only thing I can remember are numbers, but I can’t remember the context of the numbers. I didn’t speak for a long time, so sometimes I don’t make much sense when I do.
Prison left me mentally disabled. Society changed dramatically during those nine years. When I go out on the street, I don’t know which direction is north. I feel depressed at home and even more so when dealing with people in the outside world. My brain doesn’t turn very easily. When I try to force it, it hurts. When I go downstairs to the little shop to buy bread, I open my mouth but I don’t know what to say when I get to the counter. I forget what I came to do. The one thing that interests me now is Buddhism. In a few days I’m planning to scrape together a little money and go to a temple in Guiyang County in Chenzhou, Hunan Province, to see if I can become a monk there. I hope that might end all my worldly troubles.
Part II:
* * *
SICHUAN
The Animal Tamer
In a story by Gabriel García Márquez, a dictator arrests a rebel. Learning that the rebel is an animal tamer by profession, the dictator obtains a lion from a circus, locks it in a cage, and starves it for three days and three nights. When the lion has just about lost his mind from hunger, the dictator pushes the rebel into a cage right next to the lion’s. The rebel can only huddle in the farthest corner of his cage as the starving lion charges him over and over, clawing the air just a few feet away.
Chen Yunfei is a man who tries to tame the wildest animals of all: Communist Party officials.
Chen is from remote Daxian County, in the Daba Mountains of northeast Sichuan. With his thick waist and large head, he looks like an incarnation of Maitreya, the Buddha of the future, every time he speaks or laughs. At the time of the June Fourth massacre, he was a university student in Beijing, and he heard with his own ears and saw with his own eyes the gigantic tanks that flattened people in the streets and the soldiers, like frenzied beasts, who fired into crowds of protesters. He calls himself “the animal trainer.”
