A Heart for Freedom (33 page)

Nelson Mandela had recently been released after twenty-seven years in jail, and he spoke eloquently about issues related to race hatred. Later he made remarkable progress in South Africa through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission he initiated.

When it was my turn to speak, I said we are born with a good sense of right and wrong, and as children we know the difference between love and hate. When we are brainwashed, however, and hate takes on a moral justification—for example, “It is right to hate an enemy of the state”—the boundary between love and hate becomes blurred. Violence and hatred accelerate because we aren’t equipped with the necessary constraints. This was the essence of the Tiananmen massacre, when the leadership and the army jumped the boundary with the excuse that they were “protecting the country” to cover their wrongdoing. It never would have happened, I said, if the Chinese people had been allowed to listen to the truth instead of government propaganda. I concluded by saying that freedom of speech and freedom of the press are essential foils to the free reign of pure hatred.

28

Life After Tiananmen

I went to Princeton at the invitation of the China Initiative program, which had awarded me a visiting scholarship. The China Initiative was the inspiration of a man named John Eliot, who happened to be visiting the celebrated Princeton professor of East Asian Studies Yu Ying-shih and his wife on the night of June 4, 1989. Together they witnessed the Tiananmen massacre on TV. The horror of this experience, quickened by the outrage and frustration he witnessed in his Chinese friends, impelled Eliot to donate an initial grant of one million dollars to Princeton to establish a program to provide educational scholarships for student refugees. This fund was administered by Professor Yu, who set up the China Initiative to give refuge to scholars and intellectuals who fled China after Tiananmen. As a refugee who received a China Initiative scholarship, I can attest to the great value it provided its numerous beneficiaries, who could come to Princeton to rest and resettle themselves after the terrible shock of persecution and flight.

Six months after I escaped to freedom, I had an apartment of my own. This was a huge milestone. For sixteen months, I had been living in other people’s houses. Now, at last, I had a key to my own home. Mrs. Yu, who had two daughters of her own, became like a mother to me. Through her love and care, I had a place where I could find the solitude I needed to heal. The feeling I had that first night, when I experienced a sense that once again I was in control of my life, came as a revelation.

I knew I wasn’t the only Chinese refugee in America beginning the struggle to recover, but this awareness did not alleviate the long, lonely, difficult process of rebuilding my life in a foreign land and culture. Unlike many of my compatriots who came to this country to start a new life, I had to start by learning to say no to people who continually asked me to give speeches or help organize events. I needed to clear some space in which to grow.

One year after the massacre, the overseas democracy movement had fallen into a state of confusion. Though many Chinese in exile wanted to help the movement forward, this desire became secondary to the pressing business of survival. If you’ve ever experienced adjusting to a new culture, you know how difficult it can be. For me, almost everything was different—language, culture, politics, grocery shopping. When you can’t speak the language, when you have no family or friends to connect you to the community, it undermines your confidence, no matter how strong you are. You perceive the world as a child does—overwhelming, strange, and big—but you must continue to project the image of maturity, confidence, and leadership.

Even though China—our homes, families, people, food, and language—had been stripped from us, we were expected, somehow, to fix our country from overseas. How could anyone lead a movement and win in those circumstances? Still, there were people who argued otherwise.

I kept hearing, “With Chai Ling as your symbol, you can do a lot of good.”

Meanwhile, I was also wrestling with survivor’s guilt, which made me say no to any activity that seemed difficult. When I visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, I was drawn to the statue of the three soldiers, representing the survivors of war, who gaze, unmoving, at the memorial wall, as if searching for their own names on it. I imagined how they would feel if they were suddenly airlifted to another planet, without any sense of whom they could trust, even among their own comrades, and then were told, “Now, don’t stop to mourn or rebuild, because you have to win another war.” That was the type of pressure I felt.

Because I had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, the spotlight was on me to carry the torch for democracy in China; but the foundation, the support, and the organizations were crumbling. I had never seen so much bitterness and enmity among people with whom I was supposedly in alliance, yet I felt it was my responsibility to fill the gaps and accomplish the impossible. Like the ballet dancer in
The Red Shoes
, I couldn’t stop dancing, even when I was too exhausted to go on.

* * *

Once I was settled at Princeton, I went to see a social worker, who promised to keep everything I said confidential.

“I hate certain people,” I said.

“Why?” she said with evident surprise.

“They always ask for more,” I said. “No matter how much I give, it’s never enough.”

I started telling her what I’d been through, and it all poured forth: how I’d lost my family and my home; how the Chinese man holding the baby in Washington, DC, had reacted to me after my speech; how the author of a recent article had called me a traitor because I’d gone to a dance club at the end of my speaking tour.

The social worker listened quietly.

“How about your husband?” she said. “Do you hate him?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “It’s sort of all the same. No matter how much I gave to him it was never enough.” I told her about my marriage and how I had always helped Feng. I told her about his recent act of violence and other things I’d been afraid to tell anyone until that moment.

“In this country,” she announced, firmly and clearly, “we call that abuse.”

“Abuse.” I repeated the word. Her voice was not loud, but to me it sounded like a burst of thunder and echoed back and forth in my mind. Until that moment I did not know Feng was doing something wrong, even though it did not feel right. In the culture I grew up in, a woman must obey her father, and then her husband when she marries, and then her son if her husband dies. A woman is never given a chance to be her own person.

Feng had even quoted 1 Corinthians 13:4-5—“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs”—to imply that everything was my fault, that I didn’t love enough. It was eye opening for someone to point out that the way he treated me was abusive. The social worker’s words altered the way I looked at my past from that time on.

Sometime that first autumn Feng paid a visit to the United States. He wanted to join me at Princeton and start the simple life he’d always wanted. I did not know how to respond. Too much had happened. Was I to believe that Feng had changed, or was this the same old back-and-forth? I had almost forgotten how charming he could be. Mrs. Yu suggested we give it some time. “Let him settle here on his own,” she said. “If this turns out to be something he still wants, then you can talk about it again.” That was good, motherly advice. I relayed this message to Feng, and the next day he flew back to France. So the decision was made for me. Although part of me still hoped Feng and I could start over again and truly realize our dreams of making it in America, his actions brought clarity and a definitive end to our marriage. He would never change.

* * *

I applied to Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School to study politics and international relations. I was determined to find a cure for the ills of modern China. During the application process, I was required to write an essay on why I was qualified to study in the field. I was suddenly unable to put pen to paper. I was blocked.

That evening, as I worked on my application, I happened to be with the director of the China Initiative. She saw I was laboring.

“What’s the matter?” she asked. “Why are you having so much trouble with the application?”

I struggled to find an answer. Finally, I broke down and told her.

“It’s Li Lu,” I said. “He laughed at the idea when I told him I wanted to study politics and international relations. He said, ‘With your naive mind, how could you ever expect to understand things like that?’” Tears poured down my cheeks as I spoke. “I felt so naive because I hadn’t foreseen the massacre, and so many people died. Maybe I should just give up. Maybe I was never supposed to do this.”

The director knelt in front of me, her eyes wide with shock.

“How can you think this way, Chai Ling?” she said. “How could you believe such nonsense? How can you let such lies block your vision?
You
were the one who gave the hunger strike speech, not Li Lu.
You
were the commander in chief at Tiananmen, not Li Lu.
You
were the one who gave testimony on June 8 when you were on the run, not Li Lu. People say all kinds of things out of envy and other motives. Can’t you see he was putting you down because you threaten him?

“Don’t let anyone take away your confidence,” she continued. “You are who you are, and that’s why good people love you. I never would have given up a high-paying job to join the Initiative if I had not heard the speech you gave on June 8. I joined because I believe in you. I believe in helping all of you to help China. Now wipe away those tears, and let’s finish the application.”

Once again, when I was at a low ebb, an angel had appeared to pull me out of my despair and paralysis. I finished the essay quickly and sent my application. Word soon came that I had been accepted. I also received a generous scholarship, as did many other students in the program.

* * *

One night as I was just settling in to the discipline and rhythm of my new work as a graduate student, I woke up in horror from a terrible dream in which I saw two coffins burning in a fire.

Instantly I feared for the lives of my mother and grandmother. “It cannot be, it cannot be,” I said to myself as I lay in the dark with my heart pounding. “Mom is so young, and so is Grandma. It must be my imagination working overtime.”

I turned on the light and called home to China. My father told me in his usual, hesitant voice that everything was fine. He managed to reassure me, and I went back to sleep.

The next night, I visited a friend who had just returned from China. She had brought me some pictures of my family and some that had been taken when I was a child.

“So you know about your mom,” she said, unexpectedly.

“What do you mean? I spoke to my dad last night, and he said she was fine.”

My friend looked startled. “You’d better talk to him again,” she said.

I raced back to Princeton and called home. This time my aunt answered; she told me to call back the next day to talk to my sister.

When I finally got through to my sister, she told me gently that my mother had gotten sick, but they had been able to treat her; she had gotten better and come home from the hospital.

As she continued with a long, drawn-out story about my mother’s health, I became impatient. “So what happened?” I asked.

My sister was quiet for a moment and then began to cry. “What happened . . . ? Mom died.”

“No—!” I screamed. Despite the premonition from my dream, I was not prepared for the news. Mom had died a month before, and Grandma soon after.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I said, sobbing into the phone.

“What could you have done?” my little sister said.

“I could have flown home, one last time, just to see them.”

“That’s exactly what Dad was worried about,” my sister said. “He was afraid you would do something foolish and get yourself arrested. What good would that do?”

“So my dream was telling the truth,” I said. “She was saying good-bye to me, in my dream.”

When I hung up the phone, all I could do was pull the covers over my head and scream. In one stroke, I had lost two of my nearest and dearest loved ones.

“Why?” I screamed out to God, though I wasn’t sure he existed. “Why? Why? Yes, you gave me freedom, but why did you take
everything else
away from me? What have I done wrong to deserve all this?”

During the midterm break, I moved in with a friend to avoid being alone. But I had no strength to do anything. I just stayed in bed and cried myself to sleep. When I woke up, I cried again.