Beijing Coma (54 page)

‘Pu Wenhua drew a map, but this one’s much more professional,’ Wang Fei said, leaning over.

‘But everything keeps changing,’ I said. ‘The buses have moved into this patch here, so this part needs to be redrawn.’

‘The provincial students’ camp won’t be moving, and I was told that the finance office and propaganda office on the Monument are pretty stable too,’ Chuchu said.

Big Chan patted Wang Fei’s shoulder. ‘This guy is the head of propaganda, and he’s just told me he wants to move his office over to the Museum of Chinese History.’

Chuchu glanced at Wang Fei, who was considerably shorter than her, and continued, ‘The map is of how things stand today. If there are any changes, you can amend it yourselves.’

‘Which country are you off to?’ Mou Sen asked, a note of envy creeping into his voice.

‘England. I’m going to do a Master’s at Manchester University.’ Her face assumed the superior air of someone about to discover the excitement of foreign places.

‘That’s a great university, I think it’s ranked number 8 in the UK,’ Nuwa said, breaking into English. She didn’t look at Chuchu when she spoke. She hadn’t brushed her hair for several days, and was looking a bit scruffy.

‘There’s some important news here!’ Hai Feng said, walking over with a newspaper in his hands. ‘The official media have reported that Zhao Ziyang and Li Peng have visited some hunger strikers in hospital.’ In his white tracksuit bottoms, he looked like a kid in summer camp.

‘That’s old news,’ Old Fu said, wrinkling his nose. ‘And anyway, if they’d wanted to speak to the hunger strikers, they should have come to the Square!’

‘Still, it’s a big concession for them to make,’ Shao Jian said, having strolled calmly into the tent. His hair was neatly brushed. He looked as though he’d just stepped out of a hotel.

‘You don’t look like a hunger striker to me!’ I joked.

‘I’d like to see you give it a go,’ he said, pointing to the needle prick on his swollen arm. ‘I haven’t eaten for five days.’

‘There’s a heavy rainstorm forecast for this afternoon,’ I said. ‘What are we going to do with all those boxes of supplies stacked outside?’ I noticed that Chuchu looked a little crestfallen. Everyone had forgotten about her map.

‘There’s a long line of vans over there queuing up to deliver more supplies,’ Big Chan said. ‘Peasants from the suburbs have just given us a truckload of garlic and cucumbers, a food factory has donated a ton of sliced bread, and we’ve got four piles of woks over there.’

‘It doesn’t seem right to have these mountains of food here while the hunger strikers are starving themselves to death,’ Little Chan said, looking up quizzically at Big Chan. They’d swapped watches with each other. The digital watch Little Chan was wearing had no night-light.

‘Dai Wei, we’ve brought the minibus over,’ Old Fu said. ‘It’s going to be our “broadcast minibus”. I want you to install a PA system. Spend whatever you need.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll do it,’ Chen Di said, obviously thinking I wasn’t up to the job. ‘You stick to cutting hair, Dai Wei.’

‘Well, let me know if you need any help,’ I said, relieved to be absolved of the task.

Old Fu then turned to Hai Feng and told him to go back and tell Liu Gang and Shu Tong to move the Organising Committee to the Square and just leave a logistics office back at the campus. He’d forgotten that two days before he’d opposed the proposal to invite Shu Tong back to the Square.

‘The weather’s so hot now, our priority must be to prevent any outbreak of infectious diseases,’ I said. Seeing that Chuchu was about to leave, I went over to her and said, ‘Thank you so much for your map. I’m head of the student marshal team, so it will be especially useful to me.’

‘It was no problem, I just wanted to help,’ she said, turning to go. ‘Goodbye, then.’ She’d been standing on her own for ten minutes. Boys are always unwilling to speak to girls who are much taller than them.

As she left, a strong gust of wind suddenly blasted through the Square, sending plastic bags, magazines and paper boxes swirling into the air. The walls of the broadcast station’s tent flapped up, and all the scripts and newspapers flew out. Our eyes became blinded by dust.

‘My God!’ Nuwa spluttered, crouching down in the corner of the tent. The canvas roof was bound to the bamboo frame with thick rope, and tied at both ends to the marble balustrades outside. I knew it wouldn’t fall off.

‘Damn, the rainstorm’s about to arrive!’ Chen Di shouted, pulling the blanket off the camp bed and flinging it over the electrical equipment.

‘There are still a few hunger strikers lying outside, without shelter,’ I said, helping to pick up the scripts scattered on the ground.

‘I gave them umbrellas,’ Old Fu said, squatting down and clutching his backpack. ‘Dai Wei, muster your troops and go and make an inspection of our camp.’

‘My marshals have gone to help Lin Lu get the rest of the hunger strikers to board the buses,’ I said. ‘The Beijing University hunger strikers moved into the buses a couple of hours ago.’

The wind was now howling. Zhang Jie and Mao Da staggered up with their hands over their noses and mouths. ‘I thought we were getting eighty buses,’ Zhang Jie shouted at Old Fu, ‘but there are only fifty parked out there. Lin Lu wants you to go over and have a look.’

Hot gusts of dust swept through the Square, then the sky darkened and a torrential rain plummeted down. Half the tent’s roof was lifted into the air and we were immediately drenched. Everyone squeezed into a corner, except Nuwa who hid under the plastic sheet covering the amplifiers. I watched the cardboard boxes of sliced bread outside collapse in the downpour. Cold, sodden students ran over to us, asking if we had umbrellas or raincoats.

When the rain began to seep through to the amplifiers under the plastic, we quickly unplugged them and shifted them onto the camp bed under the only remaining patch of roof. Then I moved the rest of the equipment over and began reconnecting the wires. Mou Sen told Nuwa to make an announcement. She grabbed the microphone for a second then decided instead to play ‘The Five-Star Red Flag Flaps in the Wind’ to ease the mood of crisis that had gripped the Square.

Although I had no umbrella, I decided to climb up the Monument to get a better view of the situation. I grasped a balustrade and pulled myself onto the lower terrace. The Square was enveloped in a thick grey haze of rain. I looked over to the fifty buses parked in neat rows to the north. The hunger strikers had rushed inside them as soon as the rain clouds had burst. Their abandoned camps looked like a huge empty car park now. Chairman Mao’s portrait on Tiananmen Gate was a blur behind the sheets of falling rain.

The day before, I’d seen a Beijing resident march to the Square holding up a large photograph of Mao. He said he’d come to support the students. I asked him whether he knew of the Tiananmen Incident of 1976, when Mao sanctioned the use of force to quell a protest staged by tens of thousands of Beijing citizens against the Gang of Four. He said he’d never heard of the event. It wasn’t his fault. For forty years, the Communist Party had worked hard at erasing history. If my father hadn’t left behind his journal, I wouldn’t have known the true horrors of the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Cultural Revolution. No one is sure how many millions of people died under Mao’s rule. Wang Fei told me that, after the madcap Great Leap Forward of 1958 to 1960, when Mao ordered peasants to abandon their fields and produce steel in small ‘backyard’ furnaces, twelve million people died of starvation in Sichuan Province alone.

At last the torrents stopped and the clouds were blown away by the wind. Water dripped from boxes, bags and plastic shelters. Newspapers, pamphlets, empty juice cartons, posters and banners floated on the shallow lake that covered the Square.

‘Quick, broadcast an announcement telling everyone to clear up the rubbish that’s floating about,’ Cheng Bing said to Old Fu. Her hair was soaking wet. She looked very ill. I didn’t know whether she was still on hunger strike or not.

‘Do you have a script for me?’ said Old Fu, treading through a puddle of ink-stained water. ‘No? Well there’s no dry paper here for me to write on. Why not ask a doctor from the emergency tent to make the announcement?’

Inside the tent, everyone was still busy sorting out the equipment. ‘What a shame!’ said Chen Di, scooping the map Chuchu had drawn for us out of a puddle. ‘It’s ruined before we even had a chance to use it.’

I had no dry clothes to change into, so I went to find Tang Guoxian, who was the same height as me, to see if I could borrow some from him.

When I returned to the tent, I suddenly remembered that I still hadn’t sent a telegram to my brother who was on hunger strike in Sichuan, so I went in search of some students from his university to see if they had any news from him.

I walked up and down the maze of buses parked along the northern end of the Square. University banners started popping out again from the windows. The posters that had been stuck to the sides of the buses dripped their red and black ink onto the ground. Nurses in white coats were rushing back and forth, giving transfusions to sick students or carrying hunger strikers away on stretchers. Inside the buses, there was only enough room on the ground for three or four students to lie down. Most of the hunger strikers had to sit on the seats and rest their heads on each other’s shoulders.

I finally tracked down some students from my brother’s university. They’d got out of their bus and were preparing to climb up onto the roof. They hadn’t been able to open their windows, and the stench inside had become unbearable. One of the guys knew my brother. He told me that Dai Ru had opposed the movement at the beginning, and hadn’t even gone on the 4 May march. But since joining the hunger strike, he’d become one of their university’s leading activists.

‘I told Dai Ru not to join the movement,’ I said. ‘My mother only has two sons. If we both end up getting killed, there will be no one to look after her.’

‘Your brother is a great orator,’ the guy said. ‘I heard his hunger strike speech.’ He was wearing a white bandanna. The thick metal frames of his glasses flashed in the sunlight. The student standing next to him climbed into a cardboard box on which he’d written
UNLOCK THE CHAINS OF TYRANNY
. He stuck his head and arms out through holes he’d made on the top and sides then asked his friends to give him a leg-up onto the roof of the bus.

‘That’s hard to believe,’ I said. ‘He was always afraid of public speaking. By the way, the Provincial Students’ Federation is going to be launched this afternoon. Make sure you send a representative.’

‘That’s good news. Students from the provinces have a hard time here. We keep having to beg the Beijing students for handouts. It’s about time we set up our own organisation.’

‘What do you think about this hunger strike?’ I asked. ‘Are you nervous it might provoke the government into using violence?’

The boy offered me a cigarette, took a puff of his own and said, ‘The government won’t dare use force. We’ve got the whole country behind us. Everyone wants democracy.’

‘It’s precisely because everyone wants democracy that the government will crack down on us,’ I said. I walked away then glanced back at him and said, ‘You shouldn’t smoke when you’re on hunger strike.’

After a long search, I eventually found Tian Yi. She was lying asleep on the floor of a bus next to Mimi, a folded quilt propping up her head and a drip attached to her arm. She looked contented. Not wanting to disturb her, I tiptoed away and returned to the Monument.

After the downpour, the air smelt rancid. I was relieved that Tian Yi was safely hidden away in one of the buses.

In the distance, I spotted three girls from Hong Kong walking into the hunger strike camp with big red banners. Their hair was immaculately brushed, just as A-Mei’s used to be. A pack of journalists waded through the puddles and photographed them as they passed.

I climbed to the upper terrace of the Monument. It was spotless. I assumed the rain had washed everything away. Then Shu Tong appeared and told me he’d got his student marshals to clean it up. He’d come to the Square to set up the Organising Committee’s Tiananmen office.

Up until now, the Monument had been the territory of the Beijing Students’ Federation and the Hunger Strike Headquarters. You needed a pass to get through the ring of student marshals guarding the base, another document to enter the lower terrace, and to gain access to the upper terrace, you had to have a special pass personally signed by Bai Ling, Lin Lu, Ke Xi or Han Dan. Despite this tight control, the terraces were usually filled with people.

But they were empty now, and there wasn’t a speck of rubbish on the ground. Shu Tong ordered his student marshals to stand round the perimeter and link arms.

‘It all looks so well organised now,’ I said.

‘You should have got this place cleaned up ages ago,’ Shu Tong grumbled.

‘I can only give orders to Beijing University students,’ I said. ‘No one else will listen to me. Students have flooded here from all over the country. It’s a national gathering of vagrants!’ I saw a banner in the distance that said
GOD HAS DECREED THAT LI PENG SHOULD DIE
! ‘Look at that,’ I said, pointing at it. ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit extreme? We’re pushing ourselves into a corner.’

‘I thought you were one of the radicals, Dai Wei,’ Shu Tong said. ‘Why have you become so cautious? The hunger strikers have put their lives on the line. It’s only natural that they should want to raise the stakes.’

‘I thought you opposed the strike,’ I said, feeling that it was he who had changed, not me.

‘One must learn to adapt to evolving circumstances,’ he said as we walked down to the lower terrace. ‘The Square has become a battle zone. If Beijing University’s Organising Committee doesn’t get involved in the management, it will become marginalised from the movement.’