Beijing Coma (27 page)

I rolled a sheet of paper into a conical tube and shouted through it as I walked back along the column of students: ‘Each department group must march behind its banner. Organise yourselves into rows of four, with the girls on the inside and boys on the outside.’

‘We couldn’t find a Social Science Department flag, so we made up this banner instead,’ Hai Feng said, pointing to the red banner his group was carrying. Since his three-day detention for organising the 1987 demonstration, he’d concentrated on politicising his fellow social science students.

‘How many of you went to the Square yesterday?’ I asked him.

‘About twenty. Most of them were graduate members of my Social Research Student Club.’ The light from the street lamp was bouncing off the thick lenses of Hai Feng’s glasses, so I couldn’t see the expression in his eyes.

‘Shao Jian!’ I called to Shu Tong’s dorm mate. ‘You stay on the left, and I’ll stay on the right.’ I pulled off my red paper armband, tore it in two, then slipped one band onto my arm and gave him the other.

Old Fu came up from the back and said, ‘We’ve got about two thousand students here now. Let’s get moving. The board of governors will probably be coming down here any minute.’

Wang Fei turned up with Bai Ling. He was wearing a blue tracksuit.

Bai Ling said the computer she’d been writing her thesis on had just crashed, so she’d decided that she might as well join the revolution. Nuwa, with her boyish haircut, was standing next to her. Her T-shirt had a low scoop at the front. Her neck was even longer than Tian Yi’s. She was the prettiest arts student in the university. I felt very uncouth standing next to her.

I told her to lead the slogan-shouting at the back and she said, ‘
OK!
’ in English. Mou Sen walked over, pushing his bicycle. I borrowed it from him and rode up and down. The students seemed to have formed quite an orderly column.

Just as we were about to set off, Professor Chen from the Education Department came up and stood in front of us. He and a few other professors had been having a private discussion by the campus gates. He shouted, ‘Students, your patriotic fervour is laudable, but if you walk out onto the streets, the authorities will look upon you in a very different way.’

Tian Yi glanced nervously around her. I said, ‘Cao Ming’s dad is an army general. If Cao Ming has dared join us tonight, it means that the authorities aren’t about to take any strong action.’

No one wanted to listen to Professor Chen’s advice. They shouted, ‘Students from hundreds of universities are already in the Square. Don’t stand in our way!’

‘Ignore the professor!’ Ke Xi yelled. ‘We can’t hang around here any longer. Let’s go!’

Professor Chen got on his knees and sobbed. ‘Students, don’t stir up any more trouble, I beg you! If you march to the Square, it will be the end of the new liberal General Secretary, Zhao Ziyang.’

‘Don’t listen to him!’ Wang Fei shouted. ‘He’s a neoauthoritarian!’

Shu Tong and Ke Xi grabbed the professor’s arms and dragged him back inside the campus. Old Fu said to him, ‘Just stay here, Professor, and think things over for a while.’

Mou Sen whispered into my ear, ‘Perhaps the professor is right. Once we shoot this arrow, there’ll be no going back.’

‘The reform process has reached a critical stage,’ Professor Chen shouted. ‘Don’t start demonstrating now, for God’s sake! Let society progress peacefully.’

Chen Di began shouting the slogans. ‘Beijing University is supported by the people! For the sake of the people we will lay down our lives!’ A wave of excitement swept over us and we set off, echoing Chen Di’s chants.

The dark, empty street stretched before us. Occasionally, someone returning home from a late shift would stop on the pavement and watch us pass.

At the Huangzhang intersection we saw two police vans parked on the side of the road. I became anxious. I knew that if I got arrested a third time, my mother would never forgive me. My detention in 1987 had denied her the opportunity of singing a duet in the opera company’s annual gala.

But our chanting gave us courage. I joined the rest of the marchers in shouting, ‘Oppose official profiteering! Down with corruption!’

Our procession surged forward like a train, rolling straight past the two police vans. The officers standing outside didn’t try to stop us.

When we reached the gates of People’s University, we shouted out to the students inside to join our march. Lights came on in the dorm blocks. Students opened their windows and shouted, ‘We’ll come with you, Beijing University! Just give us a moment to get dressed!’

‘We can’t wait for them, Dai Wei,’ Zhuzi said, walking up to me. ‘We must keep moving. They’ll soon catch up with us.’

‘Yes, we must keep going until we reach Tiananmen Square,’ Cao Ming concurred. The khaki military suit he was wearing boosted our morale.

Yang Tao and Hai Feng, who’d been marching in the centre of the procession, ran over and said, ‘Some of the students are already going back to the campus to get some sleep. We can’t hang around any longer.’

After we crossed the next intersection, we saw about a hundred policemen and ten police vans blocking our path ahead. From a distance, they looked like a black wall. Light from the street lamps flashed off the windscreens and a few of the policemen’s helmets. Chen Di climbed onto a rubbish bin, looked through his binoculars and announced, ‘They’re not holding electric batons. Their hands are empty.’

The procession immediately came to a halt. Han Dan, Hai Feng and the leaders of each department group stepped to the side and discussed what to do next.

‘They’ve blocked us off before we’ve even reached the Square,’ Cao Ming said. ‘The university must have told them we were coming.’

‘They haven’t got guns, there’s nothing to be afraid of,’ Wang Fei said.

Nuwa’s mouth was trembling with fear. ‘We don’t want to get ourselves arrested. It’s the middle of the night. We should turn round and head back to the campus.’

Remembering my previous arrest, I too was nervous, but part of me wanted to keep going and put up a fight.

‘Go and ask them if they’ll let us through,’ Ke Xi shouted, loud enough for the police to overhear. ‘If they won’t, we’ll have to charge into them!’

As our procession began to march forward again, Tian Yi and Bai Ling retreated to the back. Nuwa was walking arm in arm with Wang Fei, so she had no choice but to keep moving. When we were just a few paces away from the police, we halted again.

The policemen remained silent. They didn’t look as though they were planning to make any arrests.

Nuwa stepped forward and said, ‘Dear officers, we citizens are acting in accordance with the constitution . . .’ but was soon interrupted by Ke Xi, who shouted, ‘Comrade policemen! Fellow countrymen! We have come out tonight, on behalf of students from universities across Beijing, to go to Tiananmen Square and lay memorial wreaths for Comrade Hu Yaobang on the Monument to the People’s Heroes. As we’re sure you can understand, we are very saddened by his death. We sincerely hope that you will let us through . . .’

The officers stared at him, saying nothing in reply.

We stood where we were and stared back at them, continuing to chant our slogans. Han Dan turned to me and said, ‘Get the students at the back to come forward, so that we can line up facing the police. We’ll stay here shouting slogans and singing songs until they get fed up and let us through.’

Local residents who’d been woken by the commotion poured out onto the pavements to see what was going on.

An hour went by.

Then Ke Xi went over to the policemen again and shouted, ‘You are Chinese citizens, just like us. We are all grieving the death of Hu Yaobang. Please, comrades, let us pass!’ The students behind him cheered and clapped their hands.

After a few minutes of silence, we heard a policeman announce through a megaphone, ‘We were given orders to stand right here, so that’s what we’ll do.’

Once the crowd had understood what this meant, they laughed and cheered and moved forward, weaving their way past the officers and the vans. Some even chanted, ‘The people’s police love the people!’

I couldn’t take this display of leniency at face value. I remembered how brutally the police treated us in 1987, and it seemed unlikely that their attitude could relax so much in just two years. I suspected that they were leading us into some kind of trap.

In the middle of the crowd, Nuwa waved her hands and cried, ‘Beijing University students are fearless!’ She really was the prettiest girl in the university. Tian Yi and Bai Ling were walking hand in hand. I promised myself that if the police started making arrests, I’d make sure that Tian Yi didn’t come to harm.

Shu Tong turned to Han Dan, who was walking beside him, and said, ‘What are we going to do when we get to the Square?’

‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘It was your idea to march there.’

‘Well we must get a speech ready, and draft the petition. Old Fu, borrow a bike from someone and go back to the dorm to work on it. We’ll wait for you in the Square.’

‘All right,’ Old Fu said. ‘I’ll call for a favourable re-evaluation of Hu Yaobang’s career, and a clampdown on official profiteering. Mou Sen, will you help me write it?’

‘OK. Give me that opening paragraph you wrote, Shu Tong.’ Mou Sen grabbed the sheet of paper that Shu Tong handed him, then hurried back to the campus with Old Fu.

If only my mother would remove the incontinence pad that’s fallen underneath my bed. She dropped it last week. Although it’s almost dry now, I can still smell the urine. Ever since my sense of smell returned, the odours that have repelled me the most have been my own.

When dusk falls, I can smell the oil on my mother’s sewing machine next door. Sometimes I can smell my herbal pills and the scent of washing powder on the damp clothes draped over the radiator.

I listen to the ringing of bicycle bells and the cooing of pigeons preparing to return to their nests, and long to hear, among those sounds, the metallic noise of Tian Yi’s shoes clipping up the stairwell. I was with her when she went to the cobbler’s shop on the lane outside the campus to have those metal plates nailed to the soles . . . I open my ears and nostrils and, like a shark that swallows draughts of sea-water hoping to catch a few small fish, I let all the noises outside flood into me. I heard my mother mention to someone that Tian Yi has made two visits, but I must have been unconscious both times, because I have no recollection of them.

Since I’ve been in this vegetative state, I have been able to re-experience smells and sounds from my past. These are the tiny details people generally store in the back of their minds and never get a chance to savour again.

We reached the Square before sunrise. As we’d expected, it was filled with mourners and wreaths.

A huge black-and-white portrait of Hu Yaobang had been hung on the Monument to the People’s Heroes at the centre of the Square. We trod through the paper flowers that littered the ground to the north side of the Monument, where seven wreaths had been laid. The largest was from the students of the Politics and Law University. We brought out our wreath and ceremoniously placed it next to the others, while Yang Tao read out the eulogy we had prepared. He was wearing a tight Lenin-style jacket and brown sunglasses. He looked like a newly qualified young professor.

Wang Fei and Nuwa walked over, hand in hand. They were the same height. I guessed that the blue tracksuit he was wearing belonged to her.

We climbed to the upper terrace of the Monument and formed a human ladder so that Hai Feng, who was the lightest of us, could clamber to the top of the obelisk and hang up the long white sheet daubed with the words CHINA’S SOUL. As the first rays of sun lit up the sky, the white cloth turned pale orange.

Hai Feng stood there for a while, addressing the crowd. ‘We’ve made our three demands,’ he concluded. ‘Now let’s see what more we can do!’ His voice was still strong. But after shouting slogans for so many hours, I could hardly speak. I glanced around. The heavy rainfall a few minutes before had driven many students from the Square. Some had rushed over to the north side to watch the daily flag-hoisting ceremony. Others had wandered down to the south end to buy some snacks in the Qianmen market. There were only about two hundred people left in the middle.

I managed to find Tian Yi. I wanted to reassure her that I wouldn’t take part in any future demonstrations. But when I opened my mouth, no noise came out. Chen Di had borrowed my jacket and my shirt was wet. I longed to change into some dry clothes and have a cup of hot tea.

Tian Yi laughed at me and said, ‘Don’t try to speak. You seem wiser when you’re silent. You did a good job tonight. I never realised that you were such a good organiser.’ She smiled. ‘We should go to Hu Yaobang’s private residence and lay some more wreaths there. It’s only six o’clock now.’ The v-neck jumper she was wearing under her waterproof jacket looked snug and warm.

‘We’ve no more wreaths,’ I croaked. Mimi picked up Tian Yi’s camera and pointed it at us. I grabbed Tian Yi’s hand. She squeezed it briefly then pushed it away. But when the shot was taken, I was still holding her with one hand and waving the university flag with the other.

She turned to me and smiled. ‘Why is your expression always so wooden? Take off that mask!’ She looked happy and relaxed. I felt proud to be standing next to her.

I could usually walk to the Square in two hours, but it had taken us double that time. After standing in the Square for another hour, we were so tired that we all sat down on the wet paving stones.

Liu Gang wandered through the seated crowd, asking the students if they were happy with the wording of the draft petition that Old Fu and Mou Sen had brought back. Hai Feng and Zhuzi encouraged everyone to chant slogans, afraid that they might lose interest and start drifting back to the campus. After a calm discussion, we settled on seven demands, which included an affirmation of Hu Yaobang’s liberal views on democracy and freedom, a renunciation of past campaigns against spiritual pollution and bourgeois liberalism, pay rises for teachers and professors, an increase in press freedom and freedom of speech and the end of restrictions on demonstrations in Beijing.