Beijing Coma (40 page)

‘The Dialogue Delegation is a temporary organisation,’ Shu Tong said. ‘It will dissolve once the dialogue comes to an end. The Federation represents all the universities and colleges of Beijing, and will lead the student movement in the months to come.’ He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt. His arms looked as soft and smooth as Tian Yi’s.

‘There’ve been so many coups and reshuffles recently, I don’t even know who the Federation’s chairman is now,’ Nuwa said, emerging from behind the blackboard that separated the broadcasting area from the rest of the room. Her new short bob made her neck look longer and paler.

‘All those coups happened before the 4 May march,’ Shu Tong said. ‘Old Fu had the gall to convene a meeting while I was having a nap in the printing room, and got me voted off the Federation. If I hadn’t founded the Dialogue Delegation I’d be out of a job now.’ The previous week, tens of thousands of us had marched to the Square again to mark the seventieth anniversary of the May Fourth Movement. Fired by the same patriotism as the students in 1919, we demanded democratic reforms and direct talks with the government.

‘I thought Old Fu resigned from the Federation,’ Bai Ling said, then winced as she took a sip of boiling tea.

‘Really?’ Nuwa said. ‘I saw him in the Triangle this morning. He was asking students to sign a petition calling on the university authorities to award Gorbachev an honorary degree during his forthcoming visit to Beijing. He asked me to help him find a translator. He wants to discuss the matter with the Soviet ambassador!’ Nuwa laughed, covering her mouth with her hand to hide the pieces of fried dough stick she was chewing. Her gestures were always graceful. As I watched her dig her big toes into the insoles of her red leather sandals, I breathed in, but couldn’t smell the sweat on her feet.

‘I expect Old Fu handed in his resignation in the middle of the night,’ Yang Tao said, coming in to look for something to eat. ‘When he gets tired, he does rash things which he totally forgets about the next morning.’

‘Old Fu’s done his week as chairman, so it was time for him to resign anyway,’ I said, handing Yang Tao a steamed roll, which he devoured greedily. Han Dan and Liu Gang were muttering behind the blackboard. They’d just taken part in a broadcast discussion of Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms, and it sounded as if they were having an argument. The room was incredibly noisy. We couldn’t shut the windows properly because of the many electric cables hanging out. I decided that the next day I’d block off the broadcasting area with hardboard to diminish the din.

Han Dan suddenly raised his voice. They’d forgotten to turn off the microphone, so I rushed over and switched it off.

‘Stop going on about the ’87 protests,’ he yelled at Liu Gang, so loudly that everyone in the corridor could hear. ‘This movement is on a different scale. We’ve had petitions, sit-ins, marches, class boycotts, demands for dialogue . . .’

‘That’s the problem: we’ve been doing too much,’ said Liu Gang. ‘We should stop the marches and refocus on building up democracy within the campus.’ Liu Gang had been chairman of the Organising Committee since the 4 May march, and Han Dan was now his deputy.

‘If you’re going to have a row, leave the broadcasting area,’ Shu Tong said sternly. ‘The cables are in a terrible mess. Can someone sort them out?’

‘But we’ve reached an impasse,’ complained Han Dan as he and Liu Gang walked over to the bunk beds. ‘The class boycott hasn’t achieved anything. The best option now would be to go ahead with a hunger strike. It would win us popular support and force the government’s hand.’

A hubbub broke out. ‘I suppose that means you’ll want to get everyone out onto the streets again,’ Shu Tong moaned.

‘The Federation and the Organising Committee are both opposed to a strike,’ Hai Feng said, ‘and so is the Dialogue Delegation. We can’t hope to negotiate with the government while at the same time exerting pressure through a hunger strike. They wouldn’t listen to us.’

‘Well, they haven’t shown much sign of wanting to listen to us so far,’ said Han Dan, rolling up his sleeves. ‘If we don’t use a more radical approach, they’ll ignore us completely, and our movement will disintegrate.’

‘Our efforts at securing a dialogue are progressing well,’ Shu Tong said, his face turning red with anger. ‘If we launch a hunger strike, our relationship with the government will break down. And besides, most of the students here don’t support the idea. That graduate student in Block 46 who’s gone on hunger strike is a crank.’

‘Hunger strikes can be a very effective form of political protest,’ Bai Ling said, coming to Han Dan’s defence. ‘They’ve achieved a lot of success in other countries.’

Han Dan slammed his fist on the table and said, ‘The reformers in the Party have sent us messages telling us to step up our protests. They said, “the bigger the better!”’

A little nervously, Tian Yi stood up and said, ‘We’ve received many notes supporting a hunger strike. You’re not in tune with the mood of the campus, Shu Tong. The students are much more radical than you.’

‘Yes!’ exclaimed Nuwa. ‘You’ve spent so much time locked up in meetings here, you’ve lost touch with what’s going on outside.’

‘Gorbachev will be arriving in Beijing on the 15th,’ continued Han Dan. ‘It’ll be the first time a Soviet leader has visited China in forty years. The government will want to hold a big welcoming ceremony for him in Tiananmen Square. If we stage a hunger strike in the Square while he’s in town it will force the government to compromise.’

‘Well, if you want to go ahead with this crackpot plan, you’ll have to do it alone and resign from the Federation and the Organising Committee,’ Shu Tong said. He knew that the strike would destroy his Dialogue Delegation.

‘All you lot do is talk, talk, talk,’ Han Dan said, ‘but what we need is action.’ I’d never heard him speak so forcefully before. ‘All right, I will hand in my resignation. Switch the microphone back on, Dai Wei. I want to make a public announcement.’

‘You can’t let the students know how disunited we are,’ Tian Yi said.

‘Don’t worry, I know what to say,’ Han Dan said, stubbornly heading back to the microphone.

‘We’re relaying the Beijing Radio news at the moment,’ I said. ‘Do you want to interrupt it? Old Fu will be presenting his
Democracy Forum
show soon. Why not make your announcement then?’

Han Dan agreed, and went off to the canteen with Yang Tao.

Bai Ling and Tian Yi said they’d be willing to go on hunger strike. I laughed and said they’d give up after a day.

Wang Fei and I went outside to play ping-pong near the Triangle. On our way there, we bumped into my mother. Many parents had been coming onto the campus to ask the professors whether their children had joined the protests. My mother had just visited the university’s Party committee office and told them that she’d begged me to withdraw from the movement, but that I’d refused to listen, and that she would support any action the government chose to take.

My mother asks a passenger to help lift me off the train, then we wait on the platform for my cousin Dai Dongsheng to turn up. He arrives in a hired tractor and drives us back to his home in Dezhou, thirty kilometres away. It is the Dai ancestral village where my father was born. I have never visited it before. Although there are very few members of the Dai clan still living there, I still have a sense that I’m returning to my roots.

On the bumpy journey there, I think about Wang Fei’s letter. It arrived a few days ago, and my mother read it out to me on the train. Wang Fei described how, after he was discharged from hospital, he was interrogated by the police for several months and told never to disclose to anyone that he’d seen army tanks crushing the students. When he refused to agree to this, he was told he wouldn’t be allocated a job after graduation. ‘I’m confined to a wheelchair,’ he wrote. ‘But I haven’t given up on life. I recently took part in the third national games for the disabled . . . A friend’s sister helped me find a job in Hainan Island . . . You and I got the roughest deal in the end, Dai Wei. We’re worse off even than poor Mou Sen. What a bloody mess this world is . . .’

At last, the tractor’s noisy diesel engine is turned off. We’ve arrived. Someone is flashing a torch on my face.

‘Say “Hello Auntie”!’ says Dai Dongsheng to a child who is panting beside him. I presume it’s his daughter, Taotao.

‘Don’t worry, it’s late now,’ my mother says breathlessly. ‘She can say it tomorrow.’

A shrill voice shouts out, ‘I’ll take my case to the emperor! A murder must be avenged . . .’ This must be Dongsheng’s wife.

When she and Dongsheng visited us in Beijing during her illegal second pregnancy, my mother was unable to find a hospital willing to help deliver the child. The police tracked her down after a few days and sent her back to Dezhou, where her belly was opened and her baby boy was drowned before her eyes. The loss of the child drove her insane.

‘Can she look after herself?’ my mother asks, sounding a little ashamed. After they left Beijing, my mother cut out a newspaper article on the social benefits of the one-child policy and sent it to Dongsheng, telling him to persuade his wife to have the child in a government clinic, then pay the fine. She never dreamed that the family planning officers would order the child to be killed. When the couple had told us stories of forced abortions and infanticides, my mother had assumed they were making them up. Dongsheng sold a tricycle cart, five pigs, a wardrobe and a television to pay for psychological treatment for his wife, but no one was able to cure her condition.

‘She makes about fifty brooms a day, which pays for our rice and oil. But she still keeps flinging things out of the house. Look, she’s torn everything off the walls. It’s not easy living with someone who’s lost their mind. She’s even more unstable than my father was.’ Then he adds, ‘Have you remembered to bring the crackdown certificate saying that Dai Wei wasn’t involved in the counter-revolutionary riots? You’ll need to show it to the clinic before they’ll agree to treat him.’

‘Yes, I paid someone to forge one for me. It’s valid for two years.’

‘I didn’t realise he was in such a bad way. Can’t he speak at all?’

‘In your letter you said that this Dr Ma can bring the dead back to life, and make paralysed people walk again,’ my mother says, not bothering to answer him.

‘Yes, he’s very famous around here. Two years ago, he was a full-time teacher at our village primary school, and only treated a few patients in his spare time. But after the niece of the county Party secretary started taking his herbal medicine, his name began appearing in all the newspapers. He made lots of money, and was able to open a private clinic just down the road. He has an official car to chauffeur him now. Anyway, I’ve set it all up with him. Dai Wei can check into the clinic tomorrow morning.’

‘If he could get Dai Wei to open his eyes or stand up, that would be wonderful. Here are some cigarette cartons for you to give as backhanders. And I’ve got some more things for you in this bag.’ My mother lifts the bag onto her lap and opens the zip. I can tell that Dongsheng, his daughter and his wife are all staring at the bag now.

‘We’re family,’ Dongsheng mumbles. ‘There’s no need for you to give us presents.’

‘I’ve brought some dresses and jumpers for you.’ Now I know why my mother spent so long rifling through the wardrobe last night. She has lots of clothes. Most of them are gifts I brought back for her from Guangzhou.

The wife doesn’t take the clothes that my mother offers her. She stays rooted to the ground, muttering, ‘I will take my case to the emperor! A murder must be avenged . . .’

‘These leather shoes are from America,’ my mother says. ‘Try them on.’ She hands Dai Dongsheng the shoes that were too small for my brother. They should be as good as new. He only wore them once.

‘We make do with rubber-soled shoes in the countryside. These look like something a cadre would own. People will laugh at me if I wear them.’ But despite the protestations, he tries them on. ‘They’re great!’ he says. ‘A perfect fit. I can wear them when I go into town to do business. I’ll look like an official.’ I can tell from his voice that he’s very pleased with them.

‘And this alarm clock is for you,’ my mother continues, turning I presume to their daughter. ‘What’s your name again? My memory’s getting so bad.’

‘She’s called Taotao,’ Dongsheng says. ‘Quickly, say “Thank you, Auntie”! Now go and put the kettle on. Fill it right to the top . . . She’s the opposite of her mother, that child. She doesn’t say a word.’

‘How much did the tractor you collected us in cost to hire?’

‘Twelve yuan.’

‘Well, here’s a hundred. You can keep the change. It’s spring. I’m sure there’s machinery or seeds you’ll have to buy.’

‘There’s no need for this. We’re family, after all. You’ve got Dai Wei to look after. It’s not as if you’re well off.’

‘Things aren’t easy for us, but we’re still better off than you are out here in the countryside. Go on, take it.’

‘I will take my case to the emperor! A murder must be avenged . . .’

While Wang Fei and I were playing ping-pong, we heard Han Dan’s voice blaring through the students’ loudspeakers: ‘I’ve resigned from the Organising Committee. I plan to organise a hunger strike and intensify our protests . . .’

We put down our ping-pong bats. It was getting too dark to play.

‘He’s right to call for a hunger strike now,’ Wang Fei said, wiping his sweaty hands on his trousers as we walked back to our dorm block. ‘But I’m not going to jump on his bandwagon. I proposed a strike weeks ago, when the movement first started. Now he’s making out it’s all his idea.’