The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China From the Bottom Up (25 page)

Nobody could change my mind. In the end, they notified my dad. I was told that he trembled with fury. He cursed me and let out a loud scream: That little short-lived bastard. He then collapsed onto the floor. My siblings took him to a hospital nearby and the doctor said he had suffered a stroke. He was partially paralyzed, but his mind was very lucid. So the police decided to bring my old man out to the detention center to see me. Using my dad as a bargaining chip totally destroyed my last piece of confidence. When police wheeled him into the detention center courtyard, I was heartbroken. He was a healthy person before I left. Now he was in a wheelchair. It was just . . . too much for me to bear. I threw myself at his feet and burst into tears. As you know, I'm the only boy in the family. He had pinned all his hopes on me. He named me after the Baocheng Railroad, China's first cross-province railway, which opened up in 1957. He was hoping that my future could be as developed as the railroad. When I was growing up, I tried to live up to his expectations, and I did very well in school. He used to tell people that I was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He could never have imagined visiting his son in prison.

When police saw me crying like that, they began to think that their game plan was working. One guy, who was the police chief, helped me to my feet and said: If you admit your crime, we will be able to reduce your sentence. You can spend more time with your dad, taking care of him. You can continue to work hard at the bank to make up for your crimes. There were many innocent people like you who have been deceived by the counterrevolutionaries. People and the government will forgive your past. I hope you can return to the bosom of the Communist Party and the Chinese people. My father kept nodding while the police chief delivered his lecture. The old man even summoned enough strength to raise his hand and said, Do what the Party tells you to.

I became really agitated. I raised my voice and said: Dad, you know very well what kind of person I am. One of the things that I have learned from you is to be honest, and never lie or cheat. What I have written is all true. Innocent people were killed in Beijing.

He interrupted me and gave me a nasty look: You only witness what you are allowed to see. So what if you witnessed the killing? Those counterrevolutionaries deserved to die. We fought hard with Chairman Mao and have made China red. We can't easily give up. We can't allow the former Nationalist government or the American imperialists to destroy Communism in China. I think you have sat your butt on the wrong chair. You have moved to the enemy camp. You have slacked off on your political studies and have been corrupted by Western thinking. It's very dangerous. You should accept the punishment. You are my son and you should listen to me.

Seeing that my dad was sweating profusely, I couldn't bear to argue with him anymore. The police felt very relieved and asked me to record an “I plead guilty” message in front of my dad. I did.

LIAO:
You didn't raise any hell after your dad left, did you?

WAN:
I finally decided to compromise and admit that “my action had jeopardized the reputation of our country and the Communist Party.” But I didn't accept the charges that I had made up stories and spread rumors. Those charges were such insults to my character. Do you remember that poor Chinese guy on American TV? Following the government crackdown, that guy told an American reporter on camera that there was blood all over Tiananmen Square and that thousands of people had been killed. He had exaggerated, of course. After the interview was aired in the U.S., the Chinese government was furious and put this guy on the government's most-wanted list. A week later, he was caught and was sentenced to ten years in prison. I'm not that guy. I didn't exaggerate or lie. Anyway, my case is not over yet. Someday, when the official verdict on Tiananmen Square is reversed, I'm going to sue the government for wrongful imprisonment.

LIAO:
You've been sentenced to four years in prison, right?

WAN:
Yes, four years. It could have been worse. During the final court hearing, the judge said that my sentence was reduced due to my cooperative attitude. That was such baloney. Before I got here, I had never encountered any counterrevolutionaries. I'm now locked up with over twenty counterrevolutionaries who were involved in the June 4 student movement. All of them are just ordinary folks: teachers, college students, workers, migrant workers, a deputy county village chief, a tax collector, a journalist, and some unemployed youngsters. There is a student from a technical high school who was not even eighteen when he was arrested. Everyone is so kind, not only to one another, but also to animals.

Let me tell you a story. One morning, a pigeon suddenly fell from the sky to the ground. I was the first one to discover the poor thing. Initially, the pigeon haltingly stretched its wings and attempted to fly again. But, seconds later, it plunged like a piece of stone to the courtyard ground. We all dashed out and carefully picked it up. Luckily, the ground was covered by a layer of snow, which saved the life of that poor thing. But its wings and legs were broken. This small accident glued all the inmates together and kept us busy for quite some time. We took turns caring for that little pigeon. One guy made a cast out of a bamboo shoot and attached it to the pigeon's leg. Another inmate stole some antibiotic ointment and cotton swabs from the prison clinic to treat its wounds. My new friend, Little Yang, got some uncooked rice from the prison kitchen, chewed the rice in his mouth to make a pulp, and then fed it to the pigeon. At first, the pigeon wouldn't take anything. Little Yang and Old Lei pried its beak open and gently fed it down its throat. During the next few days, we dug up worms, and saved rice, beans, and corn from our own ration to feed the bird. We divided our group into five nursing teams. During the daytime, when we labored away in the field, we hid the pigeon inside a mosquito net over an upper-level bunk bed. We put a small bowl of rice on the bed and placed a piece of newspaper under the pigeon to catch its droppings. Generally speaking, political prisoners were treated slightly better than ordinary criminals. Guards seldom checked our cells. After two weeks, the pigeon was fully recovered. It became restless and was ready to say goodbye. Everyone felt very sad. At the same time, we all envied the pigeon's ability to fly to a free world outside.

The time finally came. The pigeon fluttered its wings, turned around and around on the ground, and kept cooing to us. It was such a smart bird. Lao Lei had an idea: Why don't we use this pigeon to send a message to the outside world?

Everyone thought it was a great idea. We found a pen and a piece of paper. Lao Lei wrote a message on our behalf: We are the twenty-three political prisoners. We are in jail because of our involvement in the June 4 student movement. We aim to overthrow the totalitarian system and bring democracy to China. That's our aspiration. We hope people outside don't forget about us and about our fight for democracy.

We tied the paper to the leg of the pigeon and held a farewell ceremony in the courtyard. We named the pigeon our “messenger for democracy” and released it. The pigeon circled above our heads and then up to the sky. A few minutes later, for some unknown reason, the bird came back, circled around, and flew in the direction of the correctional officers' dorm building.

Everyone was so carried away and nobody saw the little movement at the end as anything unusual. Afterward, we would look at the clock on the wall, trying to figure out where the pigeon was at that very moment. Lao Lei wondered if the one we saved could be a special messenger from Hong Kong or Taiwan. Little Yang totally believed it. He said it was highly possible. The pigeon from the free world deliberately landed in this prison to carry a message of hope to us. I nodded in agreement. Inside this hopeless prison, it was better to have something to believe in. Hope made time pass fast.

LIAO:
You guys attached too much symbolic meaning to an ordinary pigeon. The world is so big. I wonder where the pigeon finally landed.

WAN:
Be patient, I haven't finished the story yet. The next morning, our courtyard was suddenly surrounded by armed police with machine guns. Prison officers ransacked our beds and our clothes. All kinds of paper products—books, poems or essays written on toilet paper, journals—were taken away. Then several officers came in to hold individual talks with each one of us. They wanted to investigate what they called the “pigeon incident.”

LIAO:
What happened? Did the pigeon get shot down by the police?

WAN:
It turns out the pigeon was a pet raised by one of the prison officers. When the pigeon dropped to the courtyard, the guard thought it might have been killed. Then, two weeks later, his pet miraculously returned, with a note tied to its leg. The officer immediately reported it to his boss. They were thrilled by the precious intelligence his pet had gathered.

LIAO:
You guys saved a spy pigeon!

WAN:
Our hope was dashed in seconds. Several of us were locked up in solitary confinement for two days. Luckily, they didn't find any hard evidence. But, after that incident, our whole group was separated. I'm now staying with murderers, rapists, and drug dealers. While doing physical labor outside, each political prisoner has been assigned two or three guards. Life is getting very miserable.

LIAO:
What are you planning to do after you get out of here?

WAN:
I don't think they will allow me to go back to work in the government bank anymore. The government will never give a counterrevolutionary an opportunity to be financially successful. I don't know what I will do. Maybe I should become a professional democracy advocate. I guess I'm supposed to be a piece of stone, being used to pave the way for bigger things to happen in China. If that's my fate, I accept it, even if it means sacrificing my life.

THE TIANANMEN FATHER

In early 2005, when I was visiting Beijing, I finally had the chance to meet Professor Ding Zilin. She founded the Tiananmen Mothers, a group of more than 150 courageous families who lost relatives on June 4, 1989, when fully armed soldiers and military tanks rolled into Beijing and crushed the student pro-democracy movement. Professor Ding's only child, a seventeen-year-old high school student, was killed by a soldier's bullet on a street west of Tiananmen Square as he confronted the troops, trying to persuade them to stop using force against unarmed students.

In the past nineteen years, I have heard many heroic stories about Professor Ding, who refused to be silenced by the Chinese government. Following the massacre, she was the first to step forward and talk to the Western media about her son's death. Despite constant police harassment, house arrests, and detention, she has never ceased to gather information about other Tiananmen victims and to raise funds from overseas to help victims' families. She has never stopped challenging the government claim that the pro-democracy movement was a “counterrevolutionary riot” and that soldiers never opened fire on citizens.

On that visit, Professor Ding told me about her upcoming book,
Looking for the June 4 Victims,
which has documented the names and stories of those who were killed in the bloody crackdown. As I was leaving, she handed me a card and encouraged me to contact Wu Dingfu, a fellow Sichuanese who lost a son in the massacre.

Since Ding's book contained only a small paragraph about Wu's son, I was curious to find out more. After I returned to Chengdu, I made a phone call to Wu, who lives in Xinjing Township, not far from me. When he learned that Professor Ding was my friend, he became very enthusiastic and immediately invited me over for a visit.

On the morning of May 19, 2005, I left Chengdu on a shabby intercity bus. Three hours later, I arrived in Xinjing Township. A tricycle cabdriver took me to the Janing Apartment Complex. I found Building A, Unit 4, and stepped into the dark hallway. A man was standing near the stairway on the second floor. He had a big prominent nose. “You must be Liao Yiwu,” he said. I nodded. As I followed him through a door on the right, I heard footsteps behind. I turned around and saw a gray-haired woman. She was Wu's wife. “I was out waiting for you. We must have missed each other,” she said apologetically.

The living room was that of a family going downhill. The walls were bare and the furniture old. A large black-and-white picture on top of a desk caught my eye. It was a picture of a young man. That youthful and perpetual smile beaming from his face and the eyes behind the glasses triggered in me a flood of sad memories of that turbulent time. As I was lost in thought, Wu handed me a cup of tea and said, “That was my son, Guofeng, when he was a freshman in college . . .”

LIAO YIWU:
You probably know that the purpose of my visit is to talk with you in detail about what happened to your son and the rest of your family during and after June 4. You are not afraid to revisit this painful and sensitive topic, are you?

WU DINGFU:
Not at all. After my son died, all hopes for my family were gone. I'm not afraid of being interviewed. Where do you want me to start?

LIAO:
Why don't we go in chronological order and start with Guofeng as a kid.

WU:
OK, I will try. I have three children. The eldest is a daughter. Guofeng, who was born in 1968, was the second. He had a younger brother. Three generations of the family were born and raised in Xinjing. Ours has always been a working-class family. I was born in 1942. When I was growing up, I experienced the most turbulent years in Chinese history—the resistance war against Japan and the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists. My family was quite poor and I constantly suffered hunger as a kid. I started school late and didn't finish junior high school until 1960. My family couldn't afford to pay for my education anymore. So I dropped out of school and got a job as a requisition clerk at a small factory. My wife was born in 1944 and was also raised in a similarly poor family. She didn't finish high school either. After we were married, she stayed at home as a housewife.

LIAO:
So the whole family depended on your salary.

WU:
Yes. In the 1970s, my monthly salary was thirty yuan [US$4]. Guofeng's mother would pick up some odd jobs such as sewing buttons or lock-stitching shirt or pants borders for tailors. So between the two of us, we made about forty yuan per month. We had to use that money to raise three children. It was under Chairman Mao. Nobody dared to run any small business for extra cash. Life was hard but we took comfort in the fact that our second child, Guofeng, was really smart. He really made us proud. His grandparents doted on him, treating him like a shiny pearl in the palm of their hands. His grandpa was a tricycle driver, but he had taught himself how to read and write. He became fairly well educated. In his spare time, he would come babysit Guofeng and teach him how to write Chinese characters. Under his grandpa's tutelage, Guofeng excelled in elementary school. He was always at the top of his class and earned lots of honors. Even at an early age, we could tell that he was made for big things in the future.

LIAO:
I guess poor kids are more motivated to excel.

WU:
Due to our family's dire financial situation, I persuaded Guofeng to apply to a technical school after he graduated from junior high. He could learn some practical skills at the technical school and get a good steady job, an iron rice bowl. In those years, getting into college was very competitive. Only 2 to 3 percent of the high school graduates could get the opportunity. My eldest finished junior high school and could easily have gotten into a technical school. But we bowed to her wish and let her complete senior high school and take the national college entrance exam. Guess what? She didn't make the list. Since the whole town was filled with high school graduates like her, it was hard to get a job. For several years, she just idled around the house. So I didn't want the same thing to happen to Guofeng. But Guofeng was a smart-ass. He made a nice promise to me, then he secretly took the senior high school entrance exams. Since he had gotten very high scores, he was accepted. By the time I found out, the rice was already cooked—too late for me to intervene.

So I accepted reality. I decided to tighten my belt and do everything I could to support him. Luckily, in the 1980s, China was changing. People were allowed to start their own businesses. Guofeng's mother set up a stall in front of our house, selling small groceries to subsidize our income. I did the household chores after work and took care of the children. I soon forgave Guofeng because he continued to remain at the top of his class.

The last year of senior high was critical. Several months before the college entrance exam, all students had to attend intensive exam-preparation classes. Many of my neighbors' kids began to give up every type of extracurricular activity and stayed up very late at night to prepare for the seven tests that made up the exam. But Guofeng continued with his usual routine and looked quite relaxed. I got worried and constantly pestered him: Passing the exam is your only way out. Otherwise, with your nerdy looks, no factory will want to hire you. Each time he heard my nagging, he would adjust the glasses on the bridge of his nose and say: No worry, old man. I know what I'm doing. I still didn't trust him. I went to see his teacher. He laughed and repeated the same thing: There is nothing to worry about. Your kid does very well. Make sure he gets enough rest so he can be ready for the exam.

LIAO:
You were more nervous than he was.

WU:
My generation had been tossed around so much by Chairman Mao's political campaigns. Our lives were all ruined and wasted. We pinned all our hopes on our children. That's why we could be overly pushy and desperate. A couple of weeks later, the three-day national college entrance exam began. It was in the summer of 1986, and hot as hell. On the first morning, I put him on the back of my bicycle and pedaled him to the testing center. After he walked in, I joined hundreds of other parents and waited patiently outside. Not long after, several students were carried out of the classrooms on stretchers because they had passed out. I was so relieved that my son had survived the initial tension. At lunchtime, when his mother put the specially prepared meat dishes on the table, I asked how he did. He simply said, in his usual laid-back kind of way: Not too good. Good heavens! I was expecting a more upbeat answer. Oh well, I didn't want to say anything that could affect his concentration on the rest of his exams. So I simply told him to take a nap and get ready for the afternoon test. I waited outside in the afternoon, all sweaty. When he came out later, he repeated the same thing: Not too good. My heart sank like a big piece of rock. That night, I lost sleep. In the next three days, my nerves were stretched to the limit. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack.

LIAO:
Didn't you have to go to work?

WU:
I had asked for three days off. My boss was very understanding. The whole nation focused its attention on the exam because it was so critical for a child's future. At the end of the third day, when he came out, I couldn't hold it anymore: Tell me what has happened? He finally smiled: Old man, I don't mean to brag. If I fail, 95 percent of the students won't even have a chance. I was stunned, but felt so relieved. He then asked for some cash: My classmates and I have decided to treat ourselves for our hard work. We are going to take turns hosting parties at our homes. I immediately offered him one hundred yuan [US$13], which was a lot of money then. To tell you the truth, I had never been that generous in my whole life. But I was so carried away.

Two weeks after the exam, the test results were publicized: he got the highest score in the whole Xinjing Township, averaging 91.5 in seven subjects. As you can imagine, my whole family was overjoyed. Neighbors and relatives from afar came to congratulate us. It was such an honor. Then the authorities did a political background check and he passed. Soon, an acceptance letter arrived from People's University in Beijing. I held the letter and burst out crying. Like I said, generations of my family had been working class. He was the first one in the Wu family to be a local champion in the national exam and to be enrolled in a prestigious university in the capital city. I sincerely believed that my family's fortune was finally changing for the better.

The day he left Xinjing, my factory sent a special car and drove him to the train station in Chengdu. The station was fully packed and we had to wait for several hours. Seeing that we were very sad, he tried to cheer us up and told us not to worry about him. He was really different from those spoiled rich kids.

LIAO:
Was this in the fall of 1986?

WU:
Yes. He turned eighteen that year and he was admitted to the industrial economic management department. Look at this group picture. He and his dorm mates had it taken when they first moved in. Guofeng was a very independent kid. He got along with his classmates well and quickly adjusted to big-city life in Beijing. He was elected deputy class leader.

We sent him one hundred yuan every month to cover his food and other necessities. As society became more and more open, his mother's grocery business was taking off. Our life was getting better. In his second year, he began to date a girl from another department at the same university. She came from the northeastern city of Changchun. Both of her parents were medical professors. Initially, we objected to it, for fear that his relationship with that girl could jeopardize his studies. But Guofeng was stubborn and he wouldn't listen to us. In the summer, he asked for more money, saying that he was accompanying his girlfriend to Changchun to meet her parents. So we did send him money.

LIAO:
The girl in this picture is quite pretty. Looks like they were madly in love!

WU:
The girl was quite politically active. She soon became a Communist Party member. Guofeng brought her back to Xinjing in their sophomore year. When we saw they were so happy together, we became more supportive. We could see that they were a good match. Of course, after Guofeng died, she was still very young and naturally made other choices. Since People's University offered her a teaching job after graduation, she was under a lot of pressure to remain silent about June 4. I totally understand it. I choose not to talk too much about her so we don't get her into trouble.

LIAO:
I understand.

WU:
Anyhow, things worked out smoothly for Guofeng. He was energetic and full of hope for the future. Of course, he was the only hope of our family. Then, in April of 1986, he sent a three-page letter home, telling us about the death of Party secretary Hu Yaobang—

LIAO:
It should be in April of 1989.