by Linda Jaivin
Nick Jose had a dinner party for all of us, as well as Liu Xiaobo and other Chinese friends. The scriptwriter managed to shock even Liu Xiaobo with his table manners—quite a feat—when he shovelled fried rice that he’d tasted and didn’t like back from his plate into the serving bowl. ‘Is that considered proper behaviour in the west?’ Xiaobo asked incredulously in Chinese.
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Definitely not.’
The next morning the scriptwriter called me over at breakfast in the coffee shop of our hotel to ask, ‘Do you think the croissants are safe to eat?’ He didn’t last the entire trip, overcome, as he explained it, by the ‘negative vibes’ of Beijing.
I didn’t know about vibes, but the stink from hot, unwashed bodies, random garbage disposal, and piss and shit from the inadequate toilets around the square was growing intolerable. You could smell it over a block away. Geremie did his part to alleviate the unsanitary conditions on Tiananmen by leading a stream of Chinese friends from the square back to my room at the Palace so they could shower there. The hotel staff never asked why we went through a dozen clean towels a day.
Around this time, Hou Dejian told Xie to pay for another room at their hotel, the Jimen, for Liu Xiaobo, who was exhausted from weeks on the square. With Wuer Kaixi, his girlfriend Liu Yan and other students frequently showing up for showers and urgent discussions, the Jimen became a hive of activity.
On 23 May, during a break from work, I strolled out to the square, which if malodorous was still magnetic. Something was amiss, even in this great scene of amiss. My eyes flickered upwards and I came to understand the phrase ‘stopped in one’s tracks’. I braked so hard I nearly fell over. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing—Mao’s portrait on Tiananmen Gate, defaced with splatterings of coloured paint.
Hou had been there when three men from Mao’s own province of Hunan threw eggshells filled with coloured ink at the portrait, one of the most sacred revolutionary icons in the whole capital. What shocked Hou was the fact that student marshals immediately apprehended the men who did it and turned them over to the police. (The three men were to spend twelve years in prison for their crime.) The students then grabbed the camera of a foreign reporter who’d photographed the action and, ignoring his cries of ‘Freedom of the press!’, destroyed his film.
Immediately afterwards, a violent storm lashed Beijing. The sky turned an eerie yellow and the rains and winds were so strong that they felled a tree by the Imperial Palace. I watched the storm, with its strange black rain, from my hotel window. It seemed an ominous portent.
That night, Hou returned to the square to find an impromptu concert beginning on the monument. The punk He Yong and his band May Day were playing. He Yong was using a guitar given to him by Hou. The students recognised Hou and asked him to sing. The p.a. wasn’t working, so he picked up a megaphone and belted out ‘Get off the Stage!’ The students responded enthusiastically, screaming xiaqu bu! and mobbing him afterwards for autographs.
Wuer Kaixi had accompanied Hou to the square. He addressed the crowd. At the end of his speech, he toppled over dramatically. His bodyguards rushed to carry him off to one of the medical stations on the square.
‘What’s with him?’ Xie asked with barely disguised cynicism.
‘He has a bad heart,’ Hou replied reproachfully, a look of concern on his face.
Xie was unimpressed.
Xie Yunpeng and his mother. The lovable Xie acted as Sancho Panza to Hou’s Don Quixote.
‘Xiao Xie, Xiao Xie.’ Xie moaned and rolled over. He never got enough sleep these days. ‘Xiao Xie.’ He opened his eyes. Hou was standing by the side of his bed with Wuer Kaixi. ‘Kaixi needs a room,’ Hou told him. ‘Will you arrange one for him?’
Xie groaned. ‘Give me a chance to get up first.’
Once Wuer had left the room, Xie turned on Hou. ‘If he stays, I go.’
‘Oh c’mon, Xiao Xie,’ Hou implored, ‘don’t be like that.’
‘Okay, okay. If you insist, we’ll get him a room. But not here.’
Xie told Liu Yan, Wuer Kaixi’s girlfriend, to go to another hotel. He had a friend who worked there. She was to mention Xie’s name and ask the friend to get her and Wuer a room. He assumed that they wouldn’t register under their own names. When he learned that they had, he was furious. How thoughtless could they be? He phoned his friend, full of remorse. ‘Do whatever you think is best,’ Xie advised him.
‘I don’t think there’ll be any problem,’ his friend assured him. He was wrong. For the crime of giving Wuer Kaixi a room, the friend was not only to lose his job, but was arrested, beaten, and thrown into prison for three months.
Poor Xie, meanwhile, was trying to get some sleep the following morning, 25 May, when Cheng Lin burst into his room with her father. Her black eyes flashed with anger. ‘We’ve known each other a long time, Xie,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Hou was here?’
‘Because,’ Xie answered honestly, ‘he didn’t want me to.’
Hou was in Xiaobo’s room holding a powwow with Wuer Kaixi and Liu Yan. Swearing to Xie that they’d take Hou back home if they had to drag him there, father and daughter stormed into Xiaobo’s room. Ten minutes later, they re-emerged, and Cheng informed Xie she was splitting up with Hou. She left with her father.
Hou told Xie the terms of the settlement: ‘I’m giving her everything. The cars, the apartment, everything.’
‘You’re insane.’ Xie pouted. ‘But do what you want. None of my business.’
Later that day, one of Hou’s friends phoned him from Hong Kong. ‘You’re a hard one to get a hold of!’ he exclaimed. ‘The radio stations here have been broadcasting a request for you to get in touch. Teddy Robin’s helping to organise a benefit concert for the movement and wants you to be part of it. It’s going to be on 27 May, only two days from now.’
‘I’ll be there,’ Hou promised. He was excited. He had a role to play at last. That night, over a late-night snack, he told Liu Xiaobo, Wuer Kaixi and Liu Yan his plans. ‘Oh, and Kaixi,’ he added, ‘perhaps, as a student leader, you should think about spending more time with the students.’
Xie recalls that Wuer Kaixi dropped to the ground at this, clutching his chest.
Hou doesn’t remember this at all. ‘Xie does tend to exaggerate,’ he shrugged.
The following day, Wuer Kaixi was to hold a press conference. Hou Dejian gave him five thousand yuan to buy some new clothes for the occasion while Xie fumed. Then he flew to Guangzhou to finalise the return of the Peugeot from Jingzhou. The car had been crucial to the deal by which his father would get his new home in Jingzhou. Hou Guobang, his dream shattered, was so furious he wouldn’t even take his son’s phone calls.
More than 200,000 people packed Hong Kong’s Happy Valley Racecourse for the twelve-hour marathon fundraiser. The Concert for Democracy in China featured just about every major pop star, film and TV personality in Hong Kong and Taiwan as well. Luo Dayou was one of the few big names who didn’t participate, for reasons that were somewhat mysterious. With pro-democracy slogans decorating their t-shirts, and waving yellow strips of cloth that they tied into a ‘chain of solidarity’, the crowd cheered wildly as one after another of their pop idols took the stage.
If in Beijing the students treated Hou as an outsider to the movement, in Hong Kong he was welcomed like its special envoy. He spoke about what was happening in Tiananmen and sang ‘Heirs of the Dragon’ to thunderous applause.
Although ten years old, ‘Heirs’ had been re-charged with meaning by the protest movement. As one reporter wrote in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, ‘From Tiananmen Square to Hong Kong’s Happy Valley racecourse, Sydney to San Francisco, the sound of Hou Dejian’s patriotic song “Heirs of the Dragon” has rung out, uniting Chinese at home and abroad in their struggle for political change in the Mainland.’
Before singing his signature tune, Hou announced he was changing some of the words. In the second verse, ‘Black eyes, black hair, yellow skin—forev
er and ever an heir of the dragon’ would now be ‘like it or not—forever and ever an heir of the dragon’. Wuer Kaixi’s Turkish features reminded Hou that not all Chinese nationals looked alike; fatalism seemed more appropriate than racism. The second change turned a warning against the ‘sword of ignorance’ into the more politically relevant ‘sword of the dictator’s slaves’.
Hou asked the other performers, who included Teresa Teng, to sign his concert t-shirt. He promised to communicate their support, and that of the people of Hong Kong, to the students. He accepted numerous interviews with the Hong Kong press, pushing his and Xiaobo’s line that to be effective critics of the government’s non-democratic ways, the students had to become more democratic themselves. He condemned popular slogans like ‘Overthrow Li Peng!’ and griped that the Chinese in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the mainland seemed to think that democracy was either ‘some abstruse theory that they’ll never comprehend, or…the freedom for every individual to do as they wish, regardless of the consequences. Those who actually do have a sense of democracy as a process and a way of life, for the most part are either unwilling or unable to influence the movement.’
The following day, 28 May, Hou took part in a march of one and a half million people in support of the students, Hong Kong’s largest demonstration to date. Afterwards, he watched the TV news with his old mate the film director Tsui Hark and other friends. According to the news, the students were considering abandoning the square.
‘They can’t!’ Hou’s friends, like many in Hong Kong, found this unbearably disappointing.
‘Look at it this way,’ Hou argued. ‘If they leave now, of their own accord, they’ll be able to return some day. If they’re forced off, they may never get back there. Besides, if everything depends on the physical fact of the students’ presence in the square then, let’s face it, the movement isn’t a very meaningful one in the first place.’
So, why did Hou sing in a concert that, by raising nearly HK$14 million (US$1,800,000) for the movement, was bound to help keep them there? ‘I don’t think I was acting very rationally,’ he later conceded.
I read about the Hong Kong concert and march in the foreign press. I was keen to hear Hou’s version of events, but would be leaving Beijing before he got back. Wayne and Murray and I planned to do location scouting in Hangzhou, Shanghai and Qingdao and didn’t plan to be back in the capital until 6 June.
While Hou was still in Hong Kong, Xiaobo asked Xie to do him a favour. ‘I’m g-going to organise a hunger s-strike. I need Dejian to p-participate.’
Xie’s heart sank. ‘Why Dejian?’
‘Hou’s s-s-so famous. He’s got a lot of influence over people. If he takes p-part, it’ll be a s-success for sure.’
‘So what’s it to do with me?’ Xie already knew the answer.
‘You’re his b-best mate. Convince him to d-do it.’
Xie sighed. ‘I’ll talk to him. But he has to make the decision himself.’
‘We’ll w-work on him.’
No, Xie thought, you’ll work on him. I’m having nothing to do with this.
The following morning, Xie picked up the phone and called Hou Dejian in Hong Kong. It was 9.30 a.m. Hou was still asleep. ‘Mmm?’
‘It’s me. Xiao Xie. Sorry to wake you, but, uh, you see, Liu Xiaobo, he came to see me yesterday and well, he wants to organise a hunger strike among Beijing intellectuals.’
Hou perked up immediately. ‘Great! I’ll support that!’
‘He doesn’t want your support, exactly. He wants you to participate.’
‘Oh. Well, I don’t know about that. I’m too skinny. If I skip three meals I’ll starve to death. But I’ll certainly stand by him. I’ll be back on the evening of the 31st. You meeting my plane?’
‘You bet.’
That day, Xiaobo persuaded Xie to accompany him to a meeting of the self-titled Association of High-Level Intellectuals. Xie stood in the doorway as Liu Xiaobo invited the members of the group to join his hunger strike. Xiaobo explained that the purpose was to gain the respect of the students and a legitimate voice in the movement. The meeting erupted in debate. Few people supported Xiaobo. He looked very downcast when they left the meeting, and Xie felt sorry for him.
Only Xiaobo’s friend Zhou Duo, a young academic who’d recently gone into business, agreed to join the strike. Mild-mannered and bookish, Zhou Duo had a dash of revolutionary heroism in his blood. In a famous incident during the anti-Japanese war, his grandmother, Yang Huiming, then a student, had swum a river under gunfire to deliver the Chinese flag to eight hundred soldiers holding out on the other side. Zhou had been active in the protest movement from the start.
Xiaobo, Zhou and Xie went straight from the meeting to Zhou Duo’s place to plan the strike and draft a manifesto.
Considering the possibility that he might join the hunger strike after all, Hou Dejian, still in Hong Kong, treated himself to a large Japanese meal.
XIAOBO told Xie that he and Zhou Duo wanted to meet Hou’s plane, which was due to arrive at 8.30 on the evening of the 31st. Xie ordered two cars, one for them and one for himself, his wife Hou Xianzhi (no relation) and Hou Dejian. He hoped that on the ride back into the city, his wife could help him dissuade Hou from agreeing to what he considered an insane plan.
All were surprised to find Wuer Kaixi and Liu Yan waiting in the arrivals area. They explained that, not knowing when Hou would be getting back, but urgently wanting to speak to him, they’d met the Hong Kong flight the night before as well.
On the other side of the customs barrier, Hou was answering officials’ queries about some instructional music videos he was carrying. As the rest of the passengers passed through arrivals, the already high anxiety levels among the welcoming party rose. Each wanted to be the first to speak to Hou—Xiaobo to persuade Hou to join their hunger strike, Xie to urge him not to, and Wuer Kaixi, as it turned out, to find out how much money he was bringing back from Hong Kong.
When he finally emerged at nine o’clock, Xiaobo was first off the mark, but Wuer Kaixi and Liu Yan manoeuvred him into their car after agreeing to regroup with the others for dinner in the city.
In the car, Wuer grilled Hou about the money. How much was there? Where was it? Hou told him that the co-ordinator from Hong Kong was in charge and would contact the students soon.
At the restaurant, Xiaobo dominated the conversation, pressuring Hou to commit to his strike. Hou said he’d think about it. ‘Think about it all you like,’ Xiaobo said, ‘but it’s starting on 2 June and I want you there.’
In the car home from the restaurant, Xie finally had his turn. First, though, he and his wife listened as Hou enthused about the concert. Not only had the singers moved the audience, but the audience had moved the singers, some of whom wept as they sang. ‘And,’ he said, ‘just imagine this—after the more than two hundred thousand people had left the stadium, you couldn’t see a spot of litter on the ground. If I’m really going to be in a hunger strike on that garbage dump of Tiananmen Square, I think my sole demand will be to ask the students and the others to pay more attention to their environment.’
They all laughed. Hou Xianzhi cleared her throat. ‘Xiao Hou, if you intend to stay in Beijing for the long term, I’d advise you not to take part in this hunger strike. I don’t think you realise what the Communist Party is capable of.’
Hou listened politely. His instinct told him he was making the wrong choice, but he’d made up his mind. Joining Liu Xiaobo’s strike would symbolise his passage from outsider to insider, both on the square and, in a deeper sense, on the mainland itself. He could feel like he fully belonged somewhere, even if that place was only a fasting tent on Tiananmen Square.
There was one little problem, he told Liu Xiaobo the following day. ‘I’m scheduled to cut an album in Hong Kong next week. I’ll only be able to strike for two days, then I’ve got to go into the studio.’
‘That’s fine,’ Xiaobo assured him. ‘I think once we get the strike going, others will join us
.’
When Jimi FlorCruz heard that Hou was going to join a hunger strike, he tried to talk him out of it. ‘You’re a musician,’ he said. ‘Stick to your music.’ Jimi recalls that Hou ‘made me think that he would reconsider, maybe even scuttle the whole idea. He didn’t say, oh no, I have to do this because I love my country. He said, maybe you’re right, I’ll think about it. Then he went right ahead and did it. Typical.’
Xie worried about the effect the strike would have on Hou’s health. Hou was so skinny he hardly seemed to have any reserves at all. ‘When the two days are up,’ Xie promised, ‘I’ll make you a big bowl of rice porridge, with some side dishes that’ll be full of stuff to pep you up.’ As he began to enumerate what these would be, Hou laughed at his friend’s fussing.
‘I’ll be fine,’ he assured him.
Xie dutifully offered to go on the strike as well. He had reserves to burn. To his relief, Hou decided that wasn’t a good idea. ‘We’ll need someone with energy to run errands and look after things,’ he told him. ‘Speaking of which, I’ll need a camp bed…’
Hou popped back into the flat in Double Elms. Cheng Lin wasn’t home. He chucked down his passport, picked up a change of clothes and left without seeing her.
On Thursday 1 June, Xiaobo’s friend Gao Xin, a former university newspaper editor, decided to join the strike. ‘I’m not as well known as the rest of you,’ he said, ‘but I am a member of the Communist Party. That should count for something.’
The following day, Zhou Duo’s employers at the Stone Corporation, an innovative high-tech company, treated them to a hearty seafood lunch. Xie arrived with hundreds of copies of their manifesto, in Chinese and English.
We are on a hunger strike! We protest! We appeal! We repent!