by Ian Buruma
I noticed patches of green lawn on one side of the Square, laid out for the fiftieth anniversary of the Chinese revolution. More alterations were in store. In the bid for the 2008 Olympic Games, plans were made to turn the Square into a giant venue for beach-volleyball games. Great sandpits would be built for the swimsuited athletes to play ball in front of Mao.
Policemen in olive-green uniforms were guarding every corner of the Square, where Falun Gong supporters still arrived every day, in defiance of government orders, to do their breathing exercises, until they were grabbed and carted off to jail. Sometimes there were a dozen or so arrests, sometimes more. But the believers kept coming. And the police kept watching for the telltale signs. When there were no signs, they would ask people if they belonged to the Falun Gong. Those who answered yes were arrested.
I stood in front of the towering Monument to the People’s Heroes, with its white-stone reliefs of former rebellions: the Taiping “Christians,” who wanted to establish God’s kingdom in China; the Boxers, who besieged the foreign legations; the republican revolutionaries under Sun Yat-sen; the students of May Fourth; and of course the People’s Liberation Army marching to power. It was there, at the feet of the stone heroes, that the students in 1989 had established their headquarters, made their patriotic speeches, sang “Descendants of the Dragon,” and went on hunger strikes. So much martyrdom, so much raw emotion.
When we mounted our bikes to ride away from the Square, toward the Xidan intersection on Chang’an Avenue, the cloudless sky turned a milky gray. The desert sand was blowing in. Furry white pollen was falling like warm snow, clogging our noses and throats. Chang’an Avenue, where the tanks rolled and much of the killing took place, was smooth as glass. Once I felt a little bump. Tank tracks, I thought; a little bit of the road that they had forgotten to pave over. But when I stopped to satisfy my morbid curiosity, it turned out to be nothing but a patch of dried vomit.
Along the avenue were the brash monuments to the new China, huge buildings, like concrete monsters, expressing raw bureaucratic power. Every ten blocks or so, the monotony of gray concrete and black granite was broken by the yellow and red of a McDonald’s.
Xidan is where the Democracy Wall once stood, where Wei Jingsheng drew the crowds with his manifestos, crowds that were hungry for a fresh voice, hungry to hear something other than Party propaganda. The wall, like those tank tracks, has disappeared. Now there is a vast new plaza, called Culture Square, and where the wall once stood is a Bank of China. It was near here that Su Bingxian’s twenty-one-year-old son was killed. A gust of wind almost threw us off our bikes, and the sharp sand blew in our faces. Women drew filmy scarves around their head in protection, giving them the mottled look of lepers.
We pushed on past the Palace of the Minorities, toward Muxidi, another address bathed in the blood of June 4 victims. Not far from there, on the right side of the avenue, looming up in the fog of yellow sand, was a gigantic new building, designed in the style of 1930s Japanese fascism, with brutal classical pillars and a Chinese roof. It was one of the most grandiose buildings I had seen in Beijing. A white-granite stele added a further Oriental touch, and a star over the main gate cast a pale red light in the afternoon gloom. The gate was guarded by two young soldiers, one of whom looked fairly relaxed, while the other stood rigidly to attention, like a wax doll.
I asked the relaxed one what this building was. “Guest house,” he barked. And what is it called?
“Classified information. We cannot divulge.”
We stopped at the Army Museum. It was built long enough ago, in the Stalinist style, to have taken on a period quaintness. The inside too, with its bombastic display of missiles and rocket launchers and anti-tank weapons, its collection of machine guns, bayonets, and revolvers, its uniforms, and its tableaux of bygone heroics, such as the seventeenth-century hero Koxinga upholding “the integrity of Chinese territory and sovereignty” by battling the Dutch in Taiwan, has a distinct nineteenth-century feel. The entrance hall is decorated with large portraits of Stalin, Lenin, Marx, and Engels. And in a side hall are “gifts to the People’s Republic of China.” There is a tawdriness about them, an air of stuffy bad taste, that is less quaint than depressing. Ceau¸sescu, president of Romania, gave the Chinese people a clock in the form of a peasant’s face, with little wires sticking to its chin, like whiskers. And the gifts from the German Democratic Republic were several identical plastic tanks, handed from one dreary bureaucrat to another, year after year.
On the second floor, we entered a room filled with bronze busts. Here were the heroes of the Chinese revolution, from Chairman Mao to President Jiang Zemin. The “Ten Marshals,” including Ye Jianying, Dai Qing’s stepfather, were there. So were Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and General Zhu De. As a fraternal gesture, the North Korean “Great Leader” Kim Il Sung was smiling benevolently from his pedestal. And there, perhaps as a salute to another authoritarian Chinese leader, was a scowling Lee Kuan Yew, scourge of the Singaporean Communist movement, standing among the Communist rulers of China. It all looked extraordinarily old-fashioned yet still menacing, all these bronze balls of power.
I heard laughter. It was my Italian friend. “Listen to this,” he said as he knocked his hand against Deng Xiaoping’s head. A hollow sound echoed through the room. I tried it too, and started knocking Lee Kuan Yew, then Kim Il Sung, then Mao himself. We went about the room like children who had discovered a new game, knocking one great leader after another. And all of them sounded hollow, for they were made to look like bronze but in fact were made of plastic.
The sky outside had turned from pearly gray to yellowish brown. The wind was blowing fiercely, filling even our ears with sand. I could just make out another monstrosity not far from the Army Museum. It looked new, which indeed it was: a kind of ziggurat with a large spike sticking out from the top, like a missile. There was a sign on the front. I tried to read what it said. Something about the millennium, a millennium monument. And then I could just make out the year 2000, except that the figure 2 had already broken in half. The storm was getting so bad that we had to hide inside the museum. I looked back once more at the capital of China, but by now the yellow cloud obliterated everything. Even the year 2000 had disappeared from view.
Notes
INTRODUCTION: CHINESE WHISPERS
To return to the corresponding text, click on the asterisk and reference number.
1. walled kingdom in the middle of the world: See Arthur Waldron’s The Great Wall of China: From History to Myth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Return to text.
2. author from Hong Kong once wrote: Sun Longji, quoted in Seeds of Fire: Chinese Voices of Conscience, edited by Geremie Barmé and John Minford (New York: Hill and Wang, 1988). Return to text.
3. Deng said: Quoted in The Tiananmen Papers, edited by Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link (New York: Little, Brown, 2001). Return to text.
PART I: THE EXILES
1. crushing the plot: Quoted in Black Hands of Beijing, by George Black and Robin Munro (New York: John Wiley, 1993). Return to text.
2. with tears in their eyes: Quoted in “Wild Lily,” Prairie Fire, edited by Gregor Benton and Alan Hunter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). Return to text.
3. Chai accused the filmmakers: Quoted in Geremie Barmé’s In the Red: On Contemporary Chinese Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). Return to text.
4. people who protested were tortured and killed: Liu Binyan’s A Higher Kind of Loyalty, translated by Zhu Hong (New York: Pantheon, 1990). Return to text.
5. degeneracy of Chinese culture: Bo Yang’s remarks are quoted in Seeds of Fire, edited by Geremie Barmé and John Minford (New York: Hill and Wang, 1988). Return to text.
6. as Dai Qing once said: See Perry Link’s Evening Chats in Beijing: Probing China’s Predicament (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992). Return to text.
7. her year in prison: Quoted in Dai Qing’s My Imprisonment, translated by Geremie Barmé. Index
on Censorship, 8/1992. Return to text.
8. through political reforms: Quoted in New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices, edited by Geremie Barmé and Linda Jaivin (New York: Times Books, 1992). Return to text.
9. “Where there is God, there is freedom”: For Yuan Zhiming’s religious quest, see his Shiliao Dadi, Deliao Tiankong (Petaluma, California: CCM Publishers, 1994). Return to text.
10. clubbed to death with heavy poles: See Jonathan D. Spence’s God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996). Return to text.
11. gathering of dissident forces: See Jonathan Spence’s The Search for Modern China (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990). Return to text.
12. histrionic and didactic at the same time: Quoted in Craig Calhoun’s Neither Gods nor Emperors (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994). Return to text.
13. Intellectuals, they claimed, had found it hard: Quoted in New Ghosts, Old Dreams. Return to text.
14. coined the phrase “Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy”: See East Asia: The Modern Transformation, by John K. Fairbank, Edwin O. Reischauer, Albert M. Craig (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965). Return to text.
15. in Jin’s words: Quoted in From Youthful Manuscripts to River Elegy, by Jin Guantao and Chen Fong-ching. (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1997). Return to text.
16. Fang ended his piece: The article was reprinted in Fang Lizhi’s Bringing Down the Great Wall: Writings on Science, Culture, and Democracy in China, translated by James H. Williams (New York: Knopf, 1991). Return to text.
17. read it over and over again: See Orville Schell’s introduction to Bringing Down the Great Wall. Return to text.
18. In Fang’s words: From Bringing Down the Great Wall. Return to text.
19. need for intellectual and academic freedom: Ibid. Return to text.
20. addressing the Wizard of Oz: See Andrew J. Nathan’s China’s Transition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). Return to text.
21. delivered in Shanghai: reprinted in Bringing Down the Great Wall. Return to text.
22. Fang admires: From Bringing Down the Great Wall. Return to text.
23. leave his friends and colleagues behind: Ibid. Return to text.
24. As he observed: Quoted in Gordon Craig’s “The End of the Golden Age,” The New York Review of Books, November 4, 1999. Return to text.
25. Li Yi Zhe manifesto: Quoted in “Wild Lily,” Prairie Fire. Return to text.
26. the arrest of Wei was defensible: “Wild Lily,” Prairie Fire. Return to text.
27. The point, writes Wei: See Wei Jingsheng’s The Courage to Stand Alone (New York: Viking, 1997). Return to text.
28. the stubborn rural conservatism of the survivors: Ibid. Return to text.
29. almost fatal, conclusion: Interview with China News Digest, October 16, 1999. Return to text.
30. One of the things Wei said was: From The Courage to Stand Alone. Return to text.
31. After being robbed by village ruffians:. Lu Xun: Selected Works, Volume One, translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1956). Return to text.
32. Chineseness, he said: Published in Index on Censorship, 3/1997. Return to text.
PART II: GREATER CHINA
1. as he put it in his memoirs: Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (New York: HarperCollins, 1999). Return to text.
2. “can only confuse the English-educated world”: See T.J.S. George’s Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 1984). Return to text.
3. he was told (by a young financial consultant): Reuters report, January 6, 1998. Return to text.
4. group of young people were being arrested for organizing: See Francis Seow’s To Catch a Tartar: A Dissident in Lee Kuan Yew’s Prison (New Haven: Yale University Southeast Asian Studies, 1994). Return to text.
5. attendant nuns: Quoted in Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore Story. Return to text.
6. most decent men and women: D. J. Enright’s Memoirs of a Mendicant Professor (London: Chatto and Windus, 1969). Return to text.
7. “You can read it all in here”: Annette Lu’s book about the days of revolt is entitled Chongshen Meilidao (Taipei: Qianwei Chubanshe, 1997). Return to text.
8. inspired by nobler sentiments: Reported in The South China Morning Post, June 6, 1999. Return to text.
9. where she described the British legislators: See Jan Morris’s Hong Kong (New York: Random House, 1985). Return to text.
10. Lee used a gardening metaphor: Quoted in Asiaweek, June 2, 1995. Return to text.
11. able to piece his extraordinary story together: See Kate Saunders’s Eighteen Layers of Hell (London: Cassell, 1996). Return to text.
PART III: THE MOTHERLAND
1. Ten years later she was famous: He Qinglian’s book in Chinese is entitled Xiandaihuade Xianjing (Beijing: Jinri Zhongguo Chubanshe, 1997). Return to text.
2. only quasi-free, since political power: See “The Great Leap Backward,” by Perry Link and Liu Binyan, in The New York Review of Books, October 8, 1998. Return to text.
3. wrote a famous treatise: See Wm. Theodore de Bary’s Asian Values and Human Rights: A Confucian Communitarian Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998). Return to text.
4. once a ruler had attained absolute power: Quoted in Joseph R. Levenson’s Confucian China and Its Modern Fate, Book 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958). Return to text.
5. here is Huang’s solution: Ibid. Return to text.
6. protesting the opium trade: Quoted in East Asia: The Modern Transformation. Return to text.
7. “religious rituals of Buddhism”: For a more detailed description, see Isabel Hilton’s The Search for the Panchen Lama (London: Viking, 1999). Return to text.
8. These answers, however, are usually the opposite of the truth: All quotes from Václav Havel on the following pages are taken from his Václav Havel or Living in Truth (London: Faber and Faber, 1987). Return to text.
9. 155 dead may not seem much: Quoted in June Fourth Massacre: Testimonies of the Wounded and the Families of the Dead (New York: Human Rights in China, 1999). Return to text.
10. house arrest in June 1989: see The Tiananmen Papers, edited by Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link (New York: Little, Brown, 2001). Return to text.
11. Bao’s style as much as his politics: Ibid. Return to text.
12. in one of those open letters and reverse the June 4 decision: Bao Tong’s letter was reprinted in the periodical China Rights Forum, Summer 1999. Return to text.
13. Bao believed his boss: See Rebecca MacKinnon’s interview with Bao Tong for CNN, June 2, 1999. Return to text.
14. After all, he says: Ibid. Return to text.
15. learn from them to strengthen the nation: Mao Haijian’s book is entitled Tianchaode Bengkui (Beijing: Sanlian Shudian, 1995). Return to text.
Glossary of Names
THE STUDENTS OF 1989
WANG DAN: Student at Beijing University, and leader of the Autonomous Federation of Students (AFS) in 1989. After seven years in prison, he was allowed to go to the U.S. on medical parole. Currently studying at Harvard University.
CHAI LING: Graduate student at Beijing Normal University in 1989. Chief commander in Tiananmen Square. She escaped to Hong Kong, became an M.A. student at Princeton University, then an M.B.A. graduate at Harvard. She is now a businesswoman.
WU’ER KAIXI: Student at Beijing Normal University, and one of the leaders of the AFS in 1989. He escaped after June 4 and spent time in Paris and the U.S. He lives in Taiwan, where he is the host of a radio show.
LI LU: Student from Nanjing University. In 1989 he was Chai Ling’s deputy, and chief commander of the non-Beijing students in Tiananmen Square. He fled to the U.S., where he studied law and business administration at Columbia University. He runs an investment business in New York.
WANG CHAOHUA: Graduate student at Beijing University in 1989. She was a
leading activist in the Autonomous Association of Beijing College Students, and escaped to the U.S. after June 4. She is a Ph.D. student of modern Chinese literature at UCLA.
INTELLECTUALS AND ACTIVISTS IN EXILE
LIU BINYAN: Former journalist for the People’s Daily in Beijing. He specialized in corruption stories. Expelled from the Party in 1987 for supporting student demonstrations, he has lived in the U.S. since 1988.
WEI JINGSHENG: Dissident and author of “Democracy: The Fifth Modernization,” which was put up on “Democracy Wall” in 1978. Sentenced twice to prison, to a total of twenty-nine years he was told to leave for the U.S. on medical grounds in 1997.
WANG XIZHE: Activist in the 1970s in Guangzhou, co-author of the Li Yi Zhe manifesto, promoting democratic socialism in 1974. He lives in the U.S., as an active supporter of the China Democracy Party.
WANG BINGZHANG: Co-founder in the U.S. of the China Democracy Party. Like Wang Xizhe, and unlike Wei Jingsheng, he believes in organizing an underground political party in China.
GONG XIAOXIA: Program director for Radio Free Asia in Washington, D.C. She joined Wang Xizhe’s group of activists in Guangzhou in 1974, was jailed for several years, studied at Beijing University, and went to the U.S. in the 1980s.
FANG LIZHI: Astrophysicist. Academic promoter of democracy and free speech in China during the 1980s. After taking refuge in the American embassy in Beijing for one year, he went to the U.S. in 1991. He is now a professor at the University of Arizona.
SU XIAOKANG: Author of the 1988 television series River Elegy and strong supporter of the student demonstrations in 1989. After June 4, he fled to the West, and now lives in Princeton, New Jersey.