Beijing Coma (52 page)

‘This is the hunger strike camp,’ I said. ‘Unless there’s an emergency, no outsiders are allowed in.’

‘We’ve come here to help the students,’ the man said loudly.

Big Chan stepped forward. ‘If you want to get involved with the emergency care work, go to the Monument and discuss it with the commander-in-chief of the Hunger Strike Headquarters.’

‘We can’t gain access to the Monument! You need a pass to get onto the lower terrace, but they’re only issued on the upper terrace,’ the man grumbled, then walked off in a huff.

I realised I’d forgotten to tell the student marshals that although Wang Fei had issued new passes giving members of the Hunger Strike Headquarters access to the Monument, the original passes Ke Xi had produced for the Beijing Students’ Federation were still valid. I decided to go to the broadcast station and make an announcement.

When I entered the tent, I heard Han Dan say that the guys in orange vests were in fact medical researchers from the Ministry of Health, and not government agents as we’d assumed. Apparently everyone in their office had wanted to come to the Square to help care for the hunger strikers, so in the end they were forced to draw lots. They’d spoken with Lin Lu and advised him to bring public buses into the Square to protect the hunger strikers from the rainstorm forecast for the afternoon. But Old Fu had opposed the idea. He was afraid that if we moved the hunger strikers into the buses, someone might drive them away. I said it was a good proposal, and pointed out that if we wanted to stop the buses being driven away, we just had to deflate the tyres.

A couple of hours later, Wang Fei and I went to a Beijing duck restaurant in the Qianmen district just south of the Square. Sun Chunlin, who was only in Beijing for three days, was hosting a lunch for our Southern University gang. He’d made a fortune from the road construction company in Shenzhen. Now he’d started a trading company and bought a villa by the sea in Shekou, next to the holiday mansion of the film actress Liu Xiaoqing.

Next to me was Ge You, a scrawny little guy who was always the last to get a joke. At Southern University he struck me as gauche, but he seemed a bit more confident now. He’d moved to Shenzhen after graduation and found a well-paid job in a tea company.

Sun Chunlin was talking to him. ‘My uncle has just been appointed director of the Shenzhen Transport Bureau,’ he said. ‘I can use my connection with him to win a contract to build a twenty-kilometre stretch of road. If you join forces with me, I guarantee you’ll be a millionaire within two years.’

‘Really?’ Ge You said, his eyes lighting up.

Tang Guoxian arrived with Wu Bin and helped himself to a duck pancake.

‘I thought you were still on hunger strike,’ I said.

‘I’m the group leader,’ he answered. ‘If I carry on with the fast any longer, I won’t have the energy to look after everyone.’ He’d brought a group of five hundred students from Guangdong Province to join the hunger strike in Beijing.

Wang Fei took off his glasses and glared at Ge You and Sun Chunlin. ‘You Shenzhen crooks!’ he shouted. ‘The whole reason we’ve been starving ourselves to death is to sweep away corrupt scum like you!’

‘Don’t pretend you’ve been on hunger strike!’ Tang Guoxian sneered. ‘I bet you couldn’t even give up fags for an hour.’

Wu Bin had aged a lot since I’d last seen him. He had a goatee now, and his triangular eyes were less bright. He was halfway through his research fellowship at Wuhan College of Engineering. He’d arrived in Beijing that morning after Wang Fei had sent him a telegram urging him to join our movement.

The restaurant was full. The waitresses poured out tea for everyone. As soon as they heard I was a Beijing University student, they asked for my autograph. After I told them that Wang Fei was head of the Square’s propaganda office, a crowd gathered round, offering him cigarettes and shaking his hand. In this new job, he was being pestered day and night by students wanting to make suggestions about the direction our movement should take.

‘I have a great idea!’ said Wang Fei, enjoying the attention he was receiving. ‘I think our little gang here should establish a national student association.’

‘I hear you’ve hooked up with a girl who’s studying English,’ Sun Chunlin said to him. ‘What’s she thinking of, going out with a peasant like you?’

‘Fuck off!’ Wang Fei spat. He’d asked Nuwa to join us for lunch, but she’d refused. They hadn’t spoken for several days.

‘Some Shanghai students talked to our group yesterday about forming a national association,’ said Tang Guoxian. He grabbed a chicken wing from the dish that had just arrived. ‘God, I’m starving! I’m not going on another fucking hunger strike for as long as I live.’ He punched the table excitedly, just as he used to punch the walls of our dorm.

‘Yes, if we want to seize power, we must do it now,’ Wu Bin said, taking three long gulps from a beer glass.

‘You haven’t changed – still drinking from other people’s glasses!’ said Ge You, snatching his glass back.

‘You’ve been going out with that girl for a year now, and I still haven’t met her,’ Sun Chunlin said to me. ‘I hear she looks like A-Mei. How could you allow her to join the hunger strike?’

‘She looks nothing like A-Mei,’ I said, then wondered to myself whether they did in fact look alike. It had never occurred to me before.

‘I bumped into an old dorm mate of A-Mei’s on a student march in Guangzhou,’ Tang Guoxian said. ‘Shi Ye, I think her name was. She’s studying at Guangzhou Teachers’ College now. She’s planning to come up to Beijing soon.’

‘What, that short girl with glasses?’ I said. After A-Mei broke up with me, I visited Shi Ye several times to see if there was news from her. A-Mei had asked her to post her belongings back to Hong Kong and forward the refund of her university fees.

‘The Beijing Students’ Federation wants to set up a national association as well,’ Wang Fei said. ‘We must keep our distance from them, and do our own thing.’

A young man walked over and asked Wang Fei to recommend some books to read, explaining that although he hadn’t managed to get into university, he still wanted to improve himself. Wang Fei thought for a while, then wrote on a paper napkin
Jean-Christophe
by Romain Rolland and
The Confessions
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Sun Chunlin tapped his cigarette on the rim of the glass ashtray, and everyone’s eyes were immediately drawn to the gold Rolex on his wrist.

‘If you’d had that watch when we were dorm mates, I would have nicked it and never given it back,’ Wu Bin muttered. I remembered him blabbering on about Nazi gas chambers when we were at Southern University.

‘It’s not a fake,’ I said, examining the watch more closely. ‘It’s a real Rolex.’

‘How long has Mou Sen been on hunger strike?’ Ge You asked, turning to me.

Suddenly the voice of a female newsreader rose above the hubbub in the restaurant. A waitress had turned up the volume of the television in the corner. ‘Today, in the Great Hall of the People, Premier Li Peng and other top leaders met with representatives of the student hunger strikers: Ke Xi, Han Dan, Shao Jian . . .’

Everyone stood up and stared at the television screen in silence.

Li Peng was sitting stiffly on a red sofa, addressing the students in a stern and resolute voice. ‘The government has never said that the broad masses of the students are creating turmoil. We have never said that. We have unanimously praised the students’ patriotic fervour. Many of the complaints they have made are justified, and we are working hard to solve them. So the students’ efforts have been positive. Nevertheless, events have taken a course of their own. Disorder has broken out in Beijing, and it is spreading to the rest of the country. Beijing is in a state of anarchy. The government cannot ignore the situation. We must protect the students and the socialist system. Factory workers, employees of government organisations and urban residents have gone to Tiananmen Square to encourage the students to continue their hunger strike. I do not approve of their actions . . .’

The next shot was of Ke Xi, still in his striped hospital pyjamas, upbraiding Li Peng. ‘I thought there was no need to go over this again, but it seems that you still don’t understand. So I will repeat once more: we will only leave the Square on condition that the slanderous 26 April editorial is revoked and the government engages with us in an immediate, open, equal, direct and sincere dialogue. If these demands aren’t met . . .’

The newsreader then announced that the dialogue came to an end without any issues being resolved.

Loud debates erupted all over the restaurant. This was the first time in the forty-year history of the Chinese Republic that government leaders had engaged in a televised debate with a group of ordinary citizens. Everyone was astounded. The waitresses were so taken aback, they didn’t bother to remove the empty plates on our table or bring us the remaining dishes we’d ordered.

‘Ke Xi was very brave talking back to the Premier like that!’ one of the waitresses said, jumping on the spot with excitement. ‘It was amazing!’

‘Bloody hell!’ Wang Fei mumbled sullenly, ‘Ke Xi’s stolen the limelight. I knew I should have joined the hunger strike!’

‘You students have really got guts, demanding to sit down with the government leaders as equals like that!’ two customers shouted at us from across the room.

‘Let’s give a toast to the students!’ customers on other tables said, raising their glasses. I quickly grabbed a glass and poured some orange juice into it. Everyone cheered and laughed, then gradually quietened down again.

We immediately started picking over the details of the broadcast.

Wu Bin rubbed his small goatee. ‘Did you hear what Li Peng said at the beginning? He categorically stated that the students aren’t creating turmoil! That’s a big concession.’

‘He’s like a fox giving a New Year’s greeting to some hens,’ Tang Guoxian said, removing his shirt. ‘Don’t take his words at face value.’ He’d clearly been keeping up his marathon training in the last three years. His chest muscles looked twice as large as mine.

‘We must set up a national student association at once,’ Wang Fei said, taking a deep drag from his cigarette. ‘We here around this table will constitute its organising committee. If we’re to have any impact, we must act now.’

‘All right, I agree,’ Tang Guoxian said. ‘I can represent the Guangdong students, but who will represent the other provinces? The Beijing students won’t want to join us, so I think we should call ourselves the Provincial Students’ Federation.’

‘I wouldn’t make a good leader,’ Wu Bin said. ‘I hate giving speeches.’

‘Well don’t start having any regrets when others take over the leadership,’ Sun Chunlin said.

‘What will our relationship be to the Beijing Students’ Federation?’ I asked. ‘I suppose they should be taking orders from us, since we’re a national organisation.’ I longed to go back to the campus and have a proper rest.

‘Of course they’ll take orders from us,’ Wang Fei said, nodding his head confidently. I’d clipped his hair before we’d left the Square, but it was still uneven in patches.

‘What financial resources do we have?’ Ge You asked. ‘It costs money to run an organisation.’

‘I’d like to be the first to come forward and make a personal donation of a thousand yuan,’ Sun Chunlin exclaimed loudly.

‘I’ll put out some donation boxes, and we’ll soon have money rolling in,’ I said. ‘The Beijing Students’ Federation’s new finance office has collected hundreds of thousands of yuan already. Last week, they were so poor they couldn’t afford to print any pamphlets and had to borrow money from the Hunger Strike Headquarters.’

‘If we mobilise the students in the provinces and get the protests to spread through the country, this will become the most important student movement in China’s history,’ Wang Fei said excitedly. ‘We’ll establish our headquarters in the Square.’

‘More students from Tianjin and Hunan Province turned up today,’ Tang Guoxian said. ‘It’s like the Great Link-Up movement during the Cultural Revolution, when the Red Guards travelled around the country, exchanging revolutionary experiences.’

‘I’ll give each committee member twenty yuan to cover two days’ living expenses,’ Wang Fei said. ‘After that, we’ll have to live off donations.’

‘That wouldn’t even buy me a packet of fags,’ Tang Guoxian moaned.

‘The Beijing transport authorities have sent some buses to protect the hunger strikers from the rain, but there will only be fifty, instead of the eighty they promised,’ I said. ‘We can’t stay in the Square for ever, you know.’ I kept remembering Wen Niao warning me that if we remained in the Square any longer, epidemics would break out.

‘I have to admit, I’m still not clear what the movement’s goals are,’ Wu Bin said, drumming his feet under the table.

‘The goal of this movement is to strengthen our nation,’ I said off the top of my head. ‘Do you think America would be as powerful as it is today if it weren’t a democratic country?’

‘When General Secretary Zhao Ziyang met with Gorbachev, he confirmed that Deng Xiaoping is still China’s paramount leader,’ Wu Bin said. ‘As Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Deng controls the army. And whoever controls the army, controls the nation. So shouldn’t the first goal of this movement be to remove this power from Deng’s hands?’

‘I thought Deng Xiaoping resigned from that post,’ Tang Guoxian said.

‘That turned out to be a false rumour,’ I said. Earlier that day, Sister Gao had received inside information that Deng Xiaoping was still very much in charge.

‘I feel terrible stuffing my face like this while thousands of people are starving themselves in the Square,’ Tang Guoxian said. ‘Don’t order any more food.’