Beijing Coma (16 page)

I imagine gazing at myself through the eyes of a bird. I see myself lying flat on the bed, my nose protruding pathetically from the centre of my face, and my mother sitting on the edge of the bed, with stiff hands and cold feet.

Then I fly out of the window, and from the rooftops I see the lamplight shining obliquely on a battered bicycle frame chained to the railings. I hear the refuse truck winch a metal bin up from the ground. As the chain twists around the cylinder, there’s a bang, bang, bang like a burst of shots from a machine gun. When the bin reaches the open top of the truck and tilts down, scraps of rubbish fall onto the ground. The noises make the blood rush faster through the veins circling my rectum. The striated muscles of the external anal sphincter relax, allowing a stream of air cooler than my body temperature to slip inside me. Then there’s a crash as the bin is flung against the inside wall of the truck, and the flapping of the metal lid as the empty bin is pulled up. The truck then drives away, leaving a stink of rotting refuse that lingers in the air for hours.

When I was a child, I once tipped over a huge rubbish bin, just for the fun of it, then bolted back home. Our flat wasn’t far away, but it seemed as though I’d never reach it. A fear gripped the small of my back and spread through my entire body. In my dreams, I return to this moment again and again. I am running as fast as I can. Sometimes a huge rock pursues me from behind, but in front of me there’s always our rectangular, red-brick apartment building, lying on the ground like a coffin.

As I listen to the sounds around me and the blood racing through my body like cars speeding down a motorway, I know that I’m unable to stop breathing and die, as my mother longs for me to do. I have no control over my life or death. I am a captive now, like a lungfish in a muddy bank, sleeping through the summer drought. But the lungfish’s captivity is only seasonal. Before it sinks into its fake death, it knows it will come back to life when the rains return and fill the riverbed once more with water. Its death is a form of survival. It dies but doesn’t rot.

But when I was alive, I made no preparations for death, whether real or fake. I was in my early twenties, studying for my PhD in molecular biology. My dorm was in Block 29. The window looked out onto the Triangle – a small yard lined with bulletin boards which was the liveliest spot on the Beijing University campus.

I remember the heavy snow that fell in late December 1986. It covered my dorm’s windowsill.

I peered down. It was getting dark, but there was still a large crowd milling around in the Triangle. Earlier that month, student demonstrations had flared up in Anhui Province, then Shanghai, and today news had reached us that students of Beijing’s elite Qinghua University had also taken to the streets, protesting at the government’s slow pace of reform. A notice quickly went up in the Triangle urging Beijing University students to gather in Tiananmen Square on New Year’s Eve to demand more freedom and democracy. But before anyone had time to read it, a security officer tore it down.

There was no one left in my dorm for Mou Sen to play Mahjong with, so he and I went to look for Wang Fei.

Wang Fei’s dorm was next to mine. The radiator was on full blast. Through the thick tobacco smoke hanging in the air, I could smell his cheap cologne. He and the other guys in the dorm were debating whether to go to Tiananmen Square on New Year’s Eve.

Ke Xi was perched on a table. ‘Beijing University has always played a vanguard role in the past,’ he was saying. ‘But today more than three thousand Qinghua University students took to the streets. If we don’t mobilise ourselves now, we’ll be left behind!’ Ke Xi was studying for a bachelor’s degree in education. He was a truculent, smooth-cheeked eighteen-year-old. When he got worked up, his brow furrowed deeply and his eyes became as narrow as a hawk’s.

‘We must go to the Square,’ Shu Tong said. ‘The Party hardliners want to halt the reform process. Our demonstration will strengthen the reformers’ position.’

‘Don’t waste your time helping those so-called “reformers”, for God’s sake,’ Wang Fei spat. ‘They’re all members of the Communist Party. They’re only pushing through the economic reforms to consolidate their power. They’re not interested in democracy.’ Wang Fei’s Sichuan dialect had softened a little since our time at Southern University. But his eyesight had got much worse. His glasses were so thick now that you could barely see his eyes through them. Whatever the weather, he never took his blue windcheater off, even indoors. He was always coming up with wild plans which he never had the courage to follow through. When we were at Southern University, he often bragged he was going to return to Sichuan and instigate a peasant revolt, but none of us believed him, of course.

‘What if they arrest us?’ I said. ‘It will get marked down on our records.’

‘Don’t be so pathetic!’ Wang Fei sneered. ‘If you’re afraid of getting arrested then don’t join the revolution!’

‘Democracies aren’t created through revolution,’ said Old Fu in his calm and measured way. ‘They have to be built up gradually. The important thing is that society continues to move forward. The reformers have already made great strides.’

Mou Sen sat back and huffed in disdain. ‘We’ve had the chaotic decade of the Cultural Revolution, followed by this decade of muddled reform. The Communist Party creates huge disasters, and then spends years trying to extricate itself from them. We shouldn’t be wasting our talents trying to save the Party. It’s China that needs saving!’

My dorm mate Chen Di was there too. He spent most of his time in Wang Fei’s dorm, only coming back to ours to sleep. ‘The reform process has been like a boat without a rudder,’ he said. ‘It’s smashed into so many rocks that none of us know where it’s going.’

‘If you do go to the Square, I doubt I’ll be able to persuade anyone from Beijing Normal to join you,’ said Mou Sen dejectedly. ‘The place is run like a penal institution. The students are depressed and apathetic. The Ministry of Education has just named us a “model university”. The shame of it!’

‘If we’re not careful, Beijing University will go the same way,’ said Liu Gang, sucking on his cigarette. Liu Gang was a skilled organiser, admired by us all. He edited an unofficial student magazine called
Free Speech.
‘We must draw inspiration from our courageous predecessors. In the 1950s, a journalism student here called Lin Zhao openly criticised Mao’s persecution of rightists. She herself was labelled a rightist and put in solitary confinement. She was beaten and tortured, but refused to repent. Eventually, she was executed on Mao’s orders. We’re grown men. We shouldn’t be afraid of going to the Square. Our cowardice is shameful.’

‘A Beijing University student was condemned as a rightist?’ Ke Xi asked.

‘Yes,’ Mou Sen chipped in. ‘I’ve read about her too. She was one of Beijing University’s most gifted students. She edited a student literary magazine called
Red Mansions
.’

‘Why don’t we bring our Pantheon Society into the open?’ Shu Tong said, turning to Old Fu. ‘The university authorities know what we’ve been up to. We should ask for official recognition.’

‘If we became an official organisation, we’d be infiltrated by spies from the Ministry of State Security,’ Old Fu said. ‘There are spies embedded in every department now.’ He’d been at the university for four years already, so he understood it better than any of us.

‘The government doesn’t need to plant spies – the Student Union gives them regular reports on our activities,’ Ke Xi said. ‘There’s no point trying to be furtive. Let’s start organising the demonstration and choosing our slogans.’

‘I want to know what our slogans will be before I decide whether to join the demonstration,’ Old Fu said.

‘Would you come if we shouted “Down with the Communist Party!”?’ Wang Fei asked.

‘No. But I would if we shouted “Down with corruption!”’ Old Fu slumped back against the folded quilt on the end of his bed, like a wax figurine softening in the sun. He suffered from chronic liver disease, and was always taking herbal medicines for it.

‘You’re still stuck in the Democracy Wall Movement era, Old Fu!’ Wang Fei said. ‘Times have moved on. We must come up with a more radical agenda.’

I could see the two Chans rolling their eyes. We called them Big Chan and Little Chan because one was tall and one was short. Big Chan was a bit of a university heartthrob. He played the guitar. The wall next to his bunk was covered in photographs of pop stars. He hated dirt and mess, and was always washing his hands. He and his friend, Little Chan, who slept on the bunk below him, were inseparable. Little Chan spent a lot of time checking his hair in the mirror. Neither of them took much interest in politics.

‘The Chinese don’t care about freedom of expression,’ said Mou Sen. ‘They just want to make money. Their spirits are empty.’ He smoothed back his long fringe as he spoke. He looked like a bohemian writer.

‘And what’s your spirit like?’ I said mockingly. ‘All you think about these days is Mahjong! What happened to that novel you were going to write?’

‘You must have sold at least ten bottles of that 101 Hair Regrowth Lotion this week, Dai Wei,’ Ke Xi said. ‘So go and buy us some beer.’

‘No, only three,’ I lied. ‘The science students don’t seem to suffer from thinning hair. Do you want to try selling it to those bluestocking girls in the Education Department?’ This little business of mine was doing quite well. I’d asked Sun Chunlin to send me the bottles from Shenzhen. He bought them wholesale for twenty yuan each, and I sold them at a five-yuan mark-up. The previous week I’d made a hundred yuan profit.

‘The university authorities are going to set up a security office in the dorm area to keep a closer check on us,’ Shu Tong said. ‘We must show them that we won’t be cowed.’

‘We might get expelled if we go to the Square,’ said Old Fu. ‘Let’s keep our protests within the campus, and call for more academic freedom and official recognition of our democracy salons.’ Old Fu always looked away while he spoke, but as soon as he’d finished, he’d look back again and fix his beady eyes on you.

‘What was the Democracy Wall Movement exactly?’ I asked, thinking back to what Wang Fei had said.

‘You’re so ignorant!’ Liu Gang piped up. ‘It was that brief flowering of dissent from ’78 to ’79. Deng Xiaoping had clawed his way back to power after the end of the Cultural Revolution and was trying to oust the remaining Maoists in the Party. For a few months, he encouraged activists to post criticisms of Mao and the Gang of Four on a wall in the Xidan District. Wei Jingsheng was the leading light of the movement. You must have heard of him. He wrote a poster proclaiming that, without political reform, the other reforms Deng Xiaoping was introducing were meaningless. Deng realised that things had gone too far. Wei Jingsheng was arrested and sentenced to fifteen years in prison, and the wall was torn down.’

Cao Ming was standing at the door listening to our conversation. ‘If we don’t concentrate on our studies, how will we be able to serve the country?’ he said sternly. He was the son of an army general. He had a short military haircut and a scar on his left cheek. He didn’t mix much with the rest of us.

‘Relax, will you?’ Chen Di said. ‘Our dissertations aren’t due for another three years.’

‘Liu Gang, the science students all look up to you,’ Wang Fei said. ‘You must galvanise everyone into action and make sure we don’t lose face. The history students have prepared their placards and banners already.’

Big Chan and Little Chan walked back in. They’d just been to the washroom. ‘You’re not
still
planning to stage that demonstration are you?’ Little Chan said, drying his wet hair with a towel. ‘It’s a stupid idea. If we want to change things, we should start by asking the university to stop locking the gates at 11 p.m. This isn’t a prison, after all.’

‘Yes, and allow us to get up and dance at rock concerts,’ Big Chan said. ‘I hate the way they make us stay in our seats.’

The sky outside was black now. All I could see was an occasional snowflake hitting the windowpane. The grubby plimsolls in the room smelt worse than the toilets. I snatched a lit cigarette from Mou Sen’s hand and took a deep drag.

‘If we march through the streets, the local residents will arrest us before the police have a chance to,’ Cao Ming said. ‘Their lives have just started to get better. They don’t want us coming and messing everything up.’

‘My mother would be the first to hand me over to the police,’ I admitted.

‘That’s even more reason for us to go out onto the streets. If we don’t inform people about what’s wrong with society, nothing will ever change.’ Wang Fei removed his glasses as he spoke and rubbed them with his handkerchief.

‘This is China’s most prestigious university,’ said Shu Tong, lifting his chin in the air like an arrogant Party leader. ‘We must take the lead and go out onto the streets.’

‘I think that our Pantheon Society should recruit new members,’ Chen Di said. ‘We can bring in students from other departments, activists like Ke Xi for example.’

‘I’m not joining you!’ Ke Xi said indignantly. ‘I’m setting up a society of my own for the education students.’

‘You’re going to lead the Women’s Brigade, are you?’ Wang Fei sniggered.

‘Don’t
you
talk about women, Wang Fei,’ said Cao Ming, pulling off his socks and shoes and lying down on his bed. ‘I’m sick of you inviting your girlfriend round. As soon as she turns up, you draw your bunk curtain and set to work. You’re in so much of a hurry, you fling your half-smoked fag on the floor without bothering to stub it out. If you keep inviting her back like this, the security guards will come knocking on our door.’

‘You’re the one who keeps throwing your bloody stubs all over the place!’