Patriot Number One

by Lauren Hilgers

  “We are making progress on the land problem,” he said. “The villagers just have to be patient.” He paused to pour out a cup of tea, yellow flowers floating up to the top of the glass teapot. “My skin is much thicker this time around,” he said. “I’m really fine whatever the outcome of the election. I’m just worried about this rain—hopefully people will still show up.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Before the polls opened the next morning, between bursts of rain, a line of buses (some counted ten, others eight) headed down the road from Lufeng City and turned onto the narrow street leading to the school where Wukan’s second election would be held. They created a small, temporary traffic jam as they dropped off their passengers and then attempted to turn around. They left a small force of soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army and a fleet of men wearing plain clothes with the world’s most unhelpful ID badges, identifying them only as gongzuo renyuan, workers. The soldiers took up posts by the gates of the school, six standing guard at a time, while the mysterious workers helped election volunteers set up umbrellas against the rain. The workers set up a media table to offer visiting journalists official press passes, informational packets on Wukan, and a hardback book on Lufeng culture. There had been a handful of police at the first election, but nothing like this. The men wandered the alleyways of the village and took photos of people with their phones, making sure they were seen.

  Still more journalists were arriving in the village, and many of them gathered at Jianxing’s shop. Reporters who had been in Wukan for the uprising, and for the first election, were returning to follow up on a captivating story. Journalists from Japan, Singapore, Australia, France, and the UK arrived, along with multiple Chinese filmmakers. Reporters from Hong Kong greeted Jianxing like an old friend. A group of filmmakers from Al Jazeera occupied his couches. Everyone waited for Jianxing, as the noise of his blow-dryer echoed out of a back room. They gossiped about Zhuang’s recent escape to New York and told jokes about the two gigantic Serbian photographers who had arrived for Reuters. When Jianxing finally emerged, his hair perfectly coiffed and his black peacoat already on, he betrayed none of the nerves of the previous night. He led the group through the village toward the school, smoking a cigarette as he went.

  Villagers went in and out of the schoolyard all day, running through the downpours and passing through the phalanx of anonymous, camera-wielding workers. This time the election had no official ballot—voters could write in any name for any position. A few hours into the voting, Jianxing ran out of the school entrance, a slip of paper in his hand. “Look at this!” he called out as he ran. “One of the villagers just passed it to me.”

  The flyer suggested people for different roles on the village committee. It named Yang Semao for council chief, Hong Ruichao and one other person for deputy chief, and then, under the heading for the four regular council members, was Jianxing’s name. “I had given up running for council!” he said. “Someone is pulling me in! Well, pull away! I’m ready for it!”

  Jianxing let another villager hold the paper for a few seconds while it got slightly wet. “Be careful!” he said. “You’re ripping it!” He took it gingerly back and slipped it into a pocket. “If I get enough votes, I will move on to the runoffs!” he said.

  Later, in his shop, waiting for the voting to end, he sat talking with a friend about the election. All those buses of strangers were intimidating people, his friend complained. “I voted for Old Lin,” he said. “And Hong Ruichao and Zhuang Liehong.”

  “Did you vote for me?” asked Jianxing.

  “No! Of course not, you’re too young,” said the friend.

  “But what’s the point of voting for Zhuang Liehong?” asked Jianxing. “He’s not in China!”

  “His body may not be in Wukan,” the friend shot back, “but his heart is still here.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The election results were announced after dark, by a man who had arrived with the soldiers. Old Lin had been elected chief, with more than 5,000 votes (out of 8,000 eligible voters in the village). Yang Semao had received only about 2,500 votes. Jianxing had gotten 500, not quite enough to get him into the runoff.

  Old Lin was a few doors down at his cousin’s house when he got the news of his victory. He came walking down the alley, under an umbrella, accepting accolades as he went. He opened up his house, poured some tea, and beamed. He was very happy to have the support of the villagers, he said. He knew he had years of hard work ahead of him. It didn’t feel like a victory to celebrate—it was a call to do more.

  When a French journalist arrived and asked about the corruption case, Old Lin mentioned that he was in possession of some “evidence.” And here Old Lin paused and looked around. When nobody took him up on his offer of evidence, he mentioned it again. Finally, when it came up a third time, someone took the hint. Old Lin went over to a chest of drawers in the living room and pulled out a pack of papers. He crouched on the floor with them, spreading them out and naming them as he went. “This is Yang Semao’s confession,” he said. “This has to do with Zhang Jianxing’s role in the corruption. This is Hong Ruichao. And this one has to do with my own situation.” He spread them out in a semicircle around himself. “Hong Ruichao’s family called the village committee office earlier today,” he added. “They wanted to withdraw him from the election, but since he’s in jail and didn’t make the request himself, we’re not sure if it’s legal.” Hong Ruichao’s name, he said, would go ahead to the runoff.

  Later that night someone would show me a photo of Hong Ruichao that his lawyer had posted on the Internet. His head was shaved and he looked out forlornly from behind bars. Hong’s father spent the evening of the election in the living room of his drafty concrete house. He soberly smoked cigarettes, covering the entire bottom half of his face with his hand every time he took a drag while Hong Ruichao’s wife mixed up milk powder in a bowl. “I was very happy when Hong Ruichao decided to run for election the first time,” he said, taking a long drag. “I encouraged him to do it.” He had felt heartened by the prospect of democracy. He thought his son would be a fair member of the council. Now Hong Ruichao was in jail, and the lawyer they had hired to represent him hadn’t been to see the family in over a week. No one on the outside knew what was happening. “The only thing I care about is my son. I never thought we would end up here. But I don’t care about the election. I don’t care if it was fair or not. I don’t care about the village government. The only thing I can think about now is my son.”

  The runoff election was held the following day, with Hong Ruichao’s name on the list. Yang Semao came in second only to Old Lin and could easily have been voted in as deputy chief again. Late on the night of the first election, however, he had withdrawn, complaining that he could not work again under Old Lin. The older man was too slow-moving and too quick to agree with demands coming from Lufeng. And Yang Semao was a natural upstart. He couldn’t help himself.

  That night a group gathered at Yang Semao’s house, talking over the din from the television as Yang’s youngest son watched cartoons. His wife declared that she was glad it was over. Working on the council was dangerous, she said, and useless.

  The group paused when the sound of Yang Semao’s scooter cut off outside. He came walking in slowly, shuffling in plastic slippers. He smiled and nodded sadly. He sat briefly on a polished wooden couch, poured some tea, and answered some questions. “This has been hanging over my head for the past year,” he said. “When I decided to oppose the Lufeng government, I did so knowing that this might happen. I knew they had the confession, and they made it clear they could use it against me. I just hoped they wouldn’t.”

  Yang Semao paused to pour out more tea. “It is my fault, anyway,” he said. “I took the money. I wanted to donate it to the local school. But I did it knowing what I was doing was wrong. I knew very clearly it was not legal.
And I did it anyway. I knew it was wrong.” He had dreamed of bringing democracy to the village he loved. He had worked tirelessly, a familiar sight riding his scooter around the alleyways in flip-flops and his triangular fisherman’s hat. He had been hopeful right up until the last moment, even after the police handcuffed him and led him out of the council offices. It had taken the election to shake Yang’s resolve.

  As he talked, more and more people showed up. They took all the seats on the wooden furniture, and some pulled plastic chairs out of a corner to accommodate the newcomers. “I think the elections were as fair as possible,” Yang said. His wife, settling down next to him, let out an audible snort. Everyone in the plastic chairs chuckled. Yang managed another weak smile and retired to the kitchen as the conversation picked up. He was visible through a glass partition, leaning against the kitchen counter and eating in silence, his shoulders collapsed over a small bowl of rice while everyone in the living room continued carrying on. A few weeks later Yang would be detained again. He would receive a two-year prison sentence, and Hong Ruichao would be handed four. And even when Yang’s time was up, when his two years turned into three, he would never return to live in Wukan Village.

  19

  A Man of Wukan

  乌坎人 / Wūkăn Rén

  JULY–SEPTEMBER 2016

  Something else happened in that summer of Kaizhi’s arrival: Old Lin was arrested. Ever since he took over as village chief, officials had been obstructing him—the same officials who had tried to steal land with a fake map of Wukan. Finally the old man, after years of trying to do things legally and slowly, had gotten fed up. Lin had posted an open letter online calling on the village to stage a mass protest.“During the last four years, the sky of Wukan has lingered in the darkness before dawn,” he had written. The time had come to fight back.

  Zhuang found out about the arrest at lunch, sitting next to a window in the East Buffet, in the middle of a meal of shrimp dumplings and congee. He had had a feeling that something might happen. He had heard there was a buildup of security forces in the area the day before. And then his phone, on the table next to him, buzzed. “Oh,” Zhuang said, thumbing through photos. “They’ve come to take Lin Zulian.”

  People in the village were sending him updates. It was around two in the morning in Wukan, and the village looked like it was being invaded. In one photo, a wall of policeman in helmets, holding shields, blocked a narrow lane, while the light from another camera—one belonging to the police—flashed in the background. In a video, a group of people offscreen watched footage coming from the security camera Lin Zulian had mounted outside the enormous blank door leading to his home. The tassels from a red lantern were blowing in and out of a lower corner of the camera when the outline of a person came into view, made visible in the dark by what looked like a yellow security vest. The light above the door glinted off the man’s helmet. A swarm of police followed him, fighting to squeeze in the door three or four at a time, all in vests and helmets. They streamed in and then out again without pause—a handful of police popping out the door, followed by an unidentified man in a white shirt, and then Old Lin, skinny and frail in a white undershirt, his hands tied behind his back, pushed along by the policeman. “There he is,” a voice murmured, and then another repeated, in disbelief, “There he is.” In an instant, Old Lin left the range of the camera. The old man was gone.

  “He was going to hold a protest,” Zhuang told me, across the table. “But it was too late. He waited too long.” It was Old Lin’s own fault that it had come to this, he thought. The outcome wasn’t predetermined from the start. But it didn’t matter who was to blame—no matter what, Old Lin didn’t deserve this treatment—and it didn’t change what Zhuang would have to do. He was a man from Wukan, and he was being called back into action. He had to spread the word.

  Zhuang sent out texts over WeChat, told friends in Wukan to stay safe, but the app was based in China, under the control of the country’s censors. If he tried to use it to broadcast what was happening in his village, his posts would be blocked and his account taken down. He turned to Facebook, where he had opened an account a few years before. He had rarely used it; he had a total of two friends. Nevertheless he posted swaths of photos.

  He went about contacting every reporter he still knew in Hong Kong, China, and the United States. “The gongs are ringing again in Wukan!” he wrote online. “Villagers are confronting more than 200 SWAT police.” By the end of the day, Zhuang had more than seven hundred friends on Facebook, and the number was growing. It was as if he were Patriot Number One again, adding friends over QQ.

  * * *

  • • •

  A day after the arrest, the Lufeng Public Security Bureau released a statement about Lin Zulian.

  To the people of Wukan Village, Donghai Township, June 17th, 2016. On suspicion of using the power of his position to solicit bribes, the Lufeng People’s Procuratorate has already investigated Wukan Village Party Chief and Village Committee Chairman Lin Zulian, and has taken the appropriate action. We call upon Wukan’s villagers to actively support and cooperate as the judicial authorities carry out their work, and defend our hard-earned, shared, stable environment. Don’t allow a small number of lawbreakers to take advantage of you and lead you into extreme actions.

  The protests started right away. Villagers called on their relatives in Guangzhou and Shenzhen and told them to come back and stand up again. Zhuang watched video clips showing a crowd forming in front of the local temple, waving Chinese flags and holding up umbrellas against the sun. Journalists perched on the stage in the old temple, where traveling opera troupes used to perform, so they could photograph the crowd chanting. Lin Zulian’s wife appeared with a bandage wrapped around her right forearm. Once the crowd had amassed, it moved out of the village, past the police station, where squads of armed police, marching in formation or standing still, watched the villagers pass. Zhuang knew all the streets and landmarks as well as he knew anything.

  Every day a group of protesters gathered. They signed their names to a banner calling for the return of Wukan’s land. When the Lufeng government tried to install a new village chief, the villagers followed the man through the streets, yelling. The government released a statement announcing the formation of a group to help “stabilize the situation.” It urged the villagers to support the group and warned them to stop demonstrating, “or else you will be held responsible!”

  A few days after Lin was taken, another two a.m. raid took place, and a handful of the more visible protesters, including Hong Ruichao’s sister, disappeared. The local school was instructed not to allow students to leave the building until six or seven at night, to keep them from participating in the protests. A mob of confused parents formed in front of the school until the students were released. The village was in an uproar. And then a video was released online—this time by the Lufeng government.

  The summer of 2016, in China, was the season of videotaped confessions. Back in February, a bookseller who had been kidnapped from his home in Hong Kong had appeared in a video, broadcast on China’s Central Television, claiming that he had sneaked into China of his own accord. He leaned back awkwardly in his chair in a wood-paneled room, two oversize wineglasses full of flowers behind his right shoulder. The bookseller told the camera that he wanted to give up his residence rights in the UK.

  Then in July, China’s police force launched a crackdown on human rights lawyers, and a string of televised confessions followed, the lawyers in orange jumpsuits, the words CRIMINAL SUSPECT splashed across the bottom of the screen. By the end of the summer, a TV show would launch on CCTV, the Chinese state-run television service, comprised almost entirely of confessions made by officials who had been arrested as part of a nationwide anticorruption campaign. One disgraced party secretary from Sichuan broke down in front of the camera, choking out the words, “Life is like a live broadcast, there is no going back.”

 
; Old Lin’s confessional video, compared to these, was low-rent. The picture was blurred, and a light somewhere in the room seemed to be flashing on and off. Lin sat slumped sideways in a blue plastic chair with a shelf over his lap that made it impossible for him to stand. He was dressed in an oversize short-sleeved shirt, its collar open. His face shining in the TV light, he spoke haltingly, listing the crimes he was guilty of. “I took kickbacks in livelihood projects,” he said, his fingers twitching on the plastic restraint in front of him. “I also took kickbacks from collective purchases from the village. These are my serious crimes.” He blamed the problems on his ignorance. He didn’t understand the law.

  As soon as the video was shown, Old Lin’s wife was out in the village denouncing it. No one believed what Old Lin had said from the blue plastic chair. Hundreds of villagers staged a march every day, no matter what the weather. They marched that summer through heat, rain, and at least one typhoon. Zhuang, meanwhile, did what he could. He posted the photos on Facebook, his captions thick with pride in his fellow villagers and tinged with envy. “Rudderless with no leader!” he wrote on the sixty-fourth day of marching in Wukan, using a Chinese proverb to reference Lin Zulian’s absence. “But every day they persist; even typhoons do not stop them. This is the spirit of Wukan. I am proud to be a Wukan villager! I regret that I’m not there to march with them.”

  Zhuang shied away from protesting in the streets of New York. At the time Lin was arrested, Kaizhi was still more than a month away from arriving in the United States. Zhuang’s finances were dwindling, and he was still trying to run the personal shopping business. Posting online about the marches was, he felt, his best use. It was a daily reminder, in his isolating, quotidian life, of who he really was.