The Most Wanted Man in China

by Fang Lizhi

  How can we explain the odd serenity of my youth? It was as if I were riding in Noah’s ark. But who provided the protection? Heaven? Earth? Certain people? Protection in the outside world had something to do with the ancient city of Beijing, I think. The human protection came from my parents.

  First, the outside protection. In the uncountable wars and invasions that Beijing has been through in its history, its inner city has almost always been spared. The war with Japan broke out at the Marco Polo Bridge on the southwest edge of Beijing in 1937, but guns and cannon during the following eight years of combat did not reach to the inner city. During the civil war, at one point, artillery was stationed throughout Beijing, but the firing ended after just a few salvos. At no time has the heart of Beijing experienced aerial bombardment or (until June 1989) massacre. Beijing was often the prize over which wars and battles raged, while the city itself, at the center, remained calm. Very few physical scars of war can be found inside Beijing. The most visible relic (which I found fascinating as a boy) was a broken arrow that was lodged in the wooden placard over the Xinhua gate at Zhongnanhai. It was said to have been shot there by the rebel leader Li Zicheng in 1644.

  Indeed, Beijing seemed to have a magical deterrent power, something strong enough to deflect approaching disasters large or small. By entering the Forbidden City and standing inside that most expansive of the world’s grand imperial palaces, one could sense this power, while appreciating as well one’s own smallness and beginning to feel dominated. The ancient city, with its seven-hundred-year tradition as the center of an empire, had an intimidating dignity. This may be why fighters of wars and battles quailed as they approached Beijing, or were diverted to one side or another, bypassing the city’s heart. However valorous in battle, invaders seemed reluctant to use Beijing as a battleground.

  This strange power of Beijing does much to explain why its residents, especially those born and raised in the city, have such a visceral attachment to it and will do anything to stay there. The special Beijing draw, added to the natural conservatism of northerners in general, makes it no mystery that Beijing people tend to resemble their city itself: self-satisfied, stolid, immovable, and set in patterns that not even war can easily disrupt.

  My parents were originally southerners and did not have the stay-put-at-all-costs mentality of Beijing natives. But when war arrived they made the same choice: respond to big change by refusing to change. I cannot say why they decided not to flee when the Japanese invaded Beijing in 1937; I was only one year old at the time. But in 1948, when the civil war was closing in on Beijing, I was twelve, and I can remember that many families were leaving the city. Wealthy families found it relatively easy to pick up and leave, and even not-so-wealthy families, like ours, were heading elsewhere to escape gunfire or, should the city fall under siege, famine. My parents had friends and relatives who lived more or less out of harm’s way in parts of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and we could have fled there if my parents had wished. But in the end they made the same decision as the diehard Beijingers: don’t flee and don’t move—just cling to your patch of hallowed ground. The result was that my childhood and adolescent years passed inside the eye of some raging storms.

  We lived at three different addresses. The first, where I was born, was at Etiquette Alley in the Western City. I have no memory at all of the place. My earliest memories are of the second address, at Messenger Alley, also in the Western City. After the victory in the war with Japan, we moved again, this time to Libo Barracks in the Eastern City, and we did not move after that.

  Beijing people paid a lot of attention to addresses. The city had been an imperial capital for seven hundred years, and its physical structure reflected a single purpose: service of the emperor and imperial power. An address said everything about a family’s function and standing. Broadly speaking, the city had three regions: the inner city, the outer city, and the area outside the wall. The area outside the wall was for nondescript commoners; it was also the location of the barracks of the capital guards. The outer city was home to lower-ranking Beijing residents and was the bailiwick of street performers and entertainers, peddlers, vendors, and fortune-tellers—all sorts of people. It was also the red-light district and the imperial execution grounds. The inner city—which was a square about three miles on each side—was like a giant suite of offices. Its streets ran straight north and south, and east and west, like a coordinate grid. At the center, the grid’s “origin,” was the Hall of Great Harmony, the seat of the emperor, in the Forbidden City. An imaginary vertical line through that origin separated the Eastern City from the Western City. A family’s address—its coordinates on the grid—said everything about its status within the grand suite of offices. In general, the closer to the origin, the higher the status and the more important the office—although, in general, the Eastern City somewhat outranked the Western City. The names of the various streets and alleys often reflected the ranks and duties of the imperial minions who lived on them.

  By the time I grew up, the imperial system had officially been defunct for three decades, but the ethic of “who you are depends on where you live” remained very much alive. Our family’s addresses broadly matched our social rank. The first address, Etiquette Alley, likely got its name because imperial servants in charge of ceremonial arrangements lived there. The second, Messenger Alley, was home to baozi, the couriers whose special role was to bring people good news—of promotions, success in civil service exams, the bestowal of imperial favors, and the like. In return for their good tidings, these runners expected big tips. One of our neighbors on Messenger Alley, just two doors away, was Cheng Yanqiu, one of the four great Peking Opera stars of the time. And this, too, was fitting: in the imperial world, performers of Cheng’s caliber were also good-news messengers of a kind: it was their duty to sing congratulations on birthdays and other festive occasions.

  I can’t say for sure what our third address, Libo Barracks, was all about. It may be that a detachment of special police agents was stationed there, because it was right next to Iron Lion Alley, which was hardly an ordinary place. Under Qing rule, Iron Lion Alley was headquarters for the Capital Defense Corps. It was where Sun Yat-sen stayed when he visited Beijing and the place from which the warlord Duan Qirui ruled Beijing in the mid-1920s. The massacre of March 18, 1926, when the Duan government opened fire and killed dozens of protesters, took place there. Later, during the Japanese occupation, it was also where the Japanese stationed their military police. In 1946 it was headquarters for the joint military command of the United States, the Nationalists, and the Communists. There were, in short, plenty of reasons why our street might have been “barracks.”

  All three of our addresses reflected our social standing within that still-imperial-flavored system. We were a bit below the middle and a bit higher than the bottom. Our financial condition was also roughly in that range. My father held ordinary posts in the Treasury Department of the Ministry of Railways until he eventually reached the level of section head. His salary, which in the 1930s was eighty silver dollars a month (about one fifth of what a university professor got) provided the entirety of our family’s support. That left us hardly wealthy, but—at least as far as I can calculate in retrospect—in no dire need, either. The best evidence of “no dire need” is that I am alive today. Let me explain.

  The aspect of my childhood that my mother later talked about most was the string of illnesses that I had during the first three years of my life. Whooping cough, dysentery, tuberculosis, water on the lungs—I had them all, and maybe some other things, too. Mother said that I once got so sick that she gave up hope that I could be revived. Infant mortality in China was common at the time, and “unrevivable children” were not unusual. Many families had had the experience, so I was lucky to have pulled through. I find it hard to believe, though, that my mother ever really did, as she said, give up hope, because she also told me that she was constantly taking me for treatment to the famed Peking Union Medical College (PUMC)
hospital. Even when I was going to college, doctors and nurses at PUMC could remember me. They asked my mother how I was doing and commented that they had yet to see another folder as thick as mine. At the time, PUMC was the best public hospital in Beijing, and the most expensive, too. So, obviously, if my parents could send me there—keeping me this side of “unrevivable”—they had to have been at least lower middle class financially. In later years my mother often commented that our family’s living standards slipped steadily downward when my hospital treatments began costing so much. This attribution of the family’s decline to my illnesses was, I think, my first encounter with unjust accusation. I say this because, beginning from age four, although I was never very strong, I did not get sick anymore. Other children my age were always getting infectious diseases, but I never did. Yet our family’s living standards drifted downward anyway—so it’s hard to argue a causal relation.

  The main reason for our declining living standards was war. The years from 1944 to 1949 (the final years of the war with Japan plus the years of the civil war) were the toughest for us. I remember how every year in autumn, right before school began, my mother had to run around trying to pawn things or to borrow money in order to scrape up our school tuition. Getting past the opening day of school was always a challenge, but we never did, in fact, miss a day of school. At Messenger Alley our whole family—two parents, five children, a grandmother, and an aunt—squeezed into two bedrooms of a total of about 325 square feet, where we lived more or less like war refugees. We children never understood our family finances, because Mother sealed this information from us. She was especially careful not to let any of her money worries leak to us, because she was afraid of distracting us from our studies. Occasionally—when she looked anxious or suddenly went rushing around—we could sense her tension. But we didn’t know the reasons, and eventually the tension went away. She drew on her own inner strength in order to carve out and protect a miniature stress-free world for us.

  In the fall of 1948 the civil war reached Beijing. The city came under siege and commodity prices shot up, sometimes several times in a day. This caused people to hoard, which made everyone, both hoarders and nonhoarders, very nervous. Mother still tried to protect our separate little world at home, but I was twelve now, and she could no longer keep everything from me. I could see the hazards for myself. Many of my classmates and other children in the neighborhood were helping their families to make money to get through the tough times, even as they continued with their schooling. Some did part-time labor; others peddled goods. This caused me, too, to feel a pressure to bear my share of the family burdens. I came up with the idea of hawking newspapers.

  One day in November, around 4:00 p.m., I went to the outlet of the China Evening News and bought fifty copies of that day’s paper at the wholesale price. Then, imitating paperboys I had seen, I walked north along East Fourth Avenue shouting, “Read the paper! Read the paper!” “Hurry and read the Evening News!” “Get all the important war news!” I was naturally gifted with a loud voice, the war news was indeed vital, and people did care about it, so the papers sold quickly. By the time I reached Jiaodaokou I had only one paper left. I decided to take it home and read it myself. In a bit more than two hours I had earned approximately enough money for one meal plus a newspaper. It was the first time in my life I had made any money. I handed the profit to my mother. She, though, was not enthusiastic about my being a paperboy, so that day marked both the beginning and the end of my career in that line. People who knew me were surprised (I myself was a bit surprised) that a scrawny kid like me, who normally did not talk much, all of a sudden found the nerve to go out on the street bellowing “Hurry and read the war news!” This facet of my character seems to have remained dormant for a number of decades. Not until the 1980s, when the government formally charged me with “inciting the public,” did it reappear. When the government accusation arrived, it caused me to recall that strangely audacious paperboy. Inciter of the public? Hmm …

  The problem was that my early home environment contained nothing that remotely resembled “incitement of the public.” Father’s philosophy was “stay away from every political party.” This was not from fear, not from a wish to lie low for self-protection; it was just the way he was. His attitude toward us children was similar: ask nothing, say nothing. He almost never had anything to say about our studies, our character, or our social activities. He was true to his word never to join a political party, but when we showed interest in political organizations he expressed no disapproval, either. We had, in short, no support from him as we made our ways in life—but no opposition, either. His watchword seemed to be “Less is more.” His friends called this “transcendence,” but my mother thought it was laziness. In fact these two analyses may not be too far apart. The traditional Chinese ideals of “emptying one’s will of desires” and “rising above the fray” may, in the end, have much in common with laziness and avoidance of trouble.

  Mother’s attitude, in contrast, was always to dive in. This difference between my parents had its internal logic. In those troubled times, no family of modest means could have survived if both parents had decided to “rise above it all and take no action.” So one might say that it was Mother’s bent for involvement that made Father’s transcendence possible; or, put the other way, that while Father was transcending, Mother had no choice but to dive in.

  Mother was much more skillful at social relations than Father. She was, first of all, a polyglot. To us children she spoke standard Mandarin, but with Father she spoke the Hangzhou dialect. She could speak Shanghainese and Sichuanese, too. She was also the only one in our family who could handle a musical instrument—the accordion. The rest of us were helpless with musical instruments. Mother’s social skills made her the family’s “foreign minister.” She could take the pulse of what was going on around us. When any trendy new term appeared—in daily life, politics, or anything else—she knew it first. In later years, when I began to run into political problems, she could sniff out much of what something was all about even before I began to explain it to her.

  Although Mother was very assertive with us children, she was not frightening, because we all could see that her only motive was that we do well, especially in school. She was always happy when we did well on tests, and doing well on tests was never anything that we found especially hard to do.

  My siblings and I had different interests and seldom fought over who got what. My three sisters were close in age and usually played together, staying separate from my elder brother and me. My brother was much stronger than I physically and had a broader range of activities and a different group of friends. We went to the same school for ten years but didn’t do much together. I was not, in sum, very close with any of my siblings, but we didn’t get into each other’s way, either. Mother showed no signs of favoritism among us. She very seldom resorted to spankings, and I cannot remember ever getting one myself. My sole memory of serious punishment from her is of one day—I think it was in 1945—when my brother and I went out to see a movie and didn’t come home until late at night. Mother was furious, and our punishment was to stand facing a wall without moving. It was not that she disapproved of movies; she was afraid of the danger in our staying out after dark.

  She was right that Beijing in those days was not safe at night. Most of the alleys had no streetlights—or just a few, scattered here and there. The nighttime security forces were watchmen who patrolled around banging on bamboo cylinders. We children were warned about kidnappers who abducted children to distant cities for sale. In local slang these kidnappers were called “flower patters,” because the way they took control of children, it was said, was to pat them on their heads with a kind of drug that immediately befuddled their minds and caused them to follow the flower patter. Those words—“flower patter”—terrified me when I was little. Whenever I went out alone, I stayed as far as possible from the itinerant junk collectors who wandered the streets. It was said that there were fl
ower patters among them.

  One way of avoiding robbery in dark alleys, in those days, was to sing Peking Opera, or some other tune, in a very loud voice as one walked along. Both children and adults used this method. The theory was that if a mugger did his thing, the singing of course would stop—and that would alert neighbors, who could come to the rescue. This method may or may not have worked, but in any case it was common to hear Peking Opera in the alleyways, and love of opera was not the reason for it. It was all about boosting confidence. I did not use this “opera method” myself, because I invented my own, different method. This was to walk—strictly, without exception—close to the walls that lined Beijing alleys on either side. These were the dark areas, in the shadows, where the muggers themselves normally skulked around. My theory was that if I walked there the muggers would think that I was a mugger, too, and, since muggers are usually wary of other muggers, would leave me alone. Even now, whether on foot or on bicycle, I have a habit of sticking close to walls. This must be an unconscious vestige of that youthful “invention.”

  Other than the occasional hawker’s cry or song for mugger deterrence, the streets of Beijing in the 1930s and early 1940s were usually dead quiet both day and night. Daily life for most people, especially in the lower classes, was not much different from rural life. The city’s population had grown beyond a million, but living conditions in many ways were primitive. The unpaved alleys, as the locals said, “without wind, were three feet in dust; with rain, were a streetful of mud.” Our address at Messenger Alley in the Western City was less than two miles, as the crow flies, from where the throne of the emperor had been—but we had no running water. Our drinking water came from a hawker who arrived every morning with his wooden tanker cart and who collected a fee once a month. Every family kept a large vat for drinking water. The alternative was to visit a nearby well to draw water, just as people in rural areas did. But we had no reason to feel sorry for ourselves, because the imperial palace had no running water, either. Water for the emperors had also been delivered by wooden tanker cart. Imperial water differed only in that it came from a special source—Jade Spring Mountain—that was reserved exclusively for the emperor’s clan. When the empire collapsed, the tradition of delivering Jade Spring Mountain water to the highest rulers of the land did not. It persists to this day.