by Liao Yiwu
I started getting flustered and angry. I controlled myself for a while, then I said, “You can make trouble for me, but not for my mother!”
“This has nothing to do with me.”
“Don’t you have a mother, too?”
“Swindlers may have mothers, but aren’t they still swindlers?” That was his reply.
I was already too tired to argue with him. So I stopped arguing and said, “All right, after daybreak we’ll continue theorizing about whether or not I’m deceiving you.” And as I helped my mother down to the hotel floor to sit, I had an idea. I summoned up the courage and asked to borrow an old bicycle from the hotel, leaving my mother as security. “Mom,” I said, “you stay here for now. Wait for me to get back. Don’t leave until I come back.”
I got on the bicycle and pedaled fast in a daze to You’anmenwai. Day was just breaking. I hadn’t slept for two days and my eyes were red and stinging, but I saw some words written on a wall: “Room for Rent.” I braked sharply and asked about it. The landlord happened to be squatting right there, barely awake and looking like a mess, his hands tucked in his sleeves. I didn’t hesitate. “I want to rent a room,” I said.
“Fine,” he said. “Take a look to see if it suits you.”
I had to bend over as we went through the low door, about the height of a child. After adjusting to the dark, my eyes started to make out the place: a microscopic room with a bed made up of some stools and a wooden plank. But there was enough bedding. And I wasn’t going to be particular. All in all, it was a little nest where we could escape from the elements.
“How much is it a month?” I asked.
“Four hundred yuan,” he replied.
“Four hundred is all right,” I said. “I’ll bring someone over now and give you the money at noon.” He hesitated a moment. My heart jumped up into my throat. Luckily, the landlord agreed to give me the room. Then I hurried back and brought my almost completely exhausted mother there to rest. Nearly eighty years old, she’d never had to suffer like that before. I was an unfilial son. With 26 yuan in my pocket, I went to my younger sister’s home. What do you think was the first thing my younger sister and her husband said to me?
They didn’t need to say anything. Giving you a bowl of hot noodle soup would have been the best thing to do.
I told them about being out on the street with Mother. I didn’t complain about my elder brother’s wife. “A person like you who can’t adjust to the times,” said my younger sister’s husband, “will be bad luck to whoever comes into contact with you.”
“I paid for my younger sister’s education,” I said. “What right do you have to look down on me? Today, if it weren’t for my mother’s sake, I would rather die than walk into your house.”
“But you didn’t die, and still you came,” he replied.
“Just stop,” I said. “This is different from before. I, Liu Yi, swear by Tiananmen and before those dead brothers of mine, that if I can’t make something out of myself in this screwed-up world, I will kill myself.”
I couldn’t hold back tears as I walked away back down the street. On an empty stomach, I borrowed a three-wheeled cart near our rented room and used my 26 yuan as capital to buy vegetables wholesale at the morning market, then took them to busy places and sold them retail. If heaven had wanted to destroy me, I would have run into the urban management brigade coming to confiscate my cart, and I would have fought them to the death. But everything worked out. I made three trips, and by noon I’d earned over 100 yuan, so I used it to pay part of the rent. Mother and son had a meal of noodles by the side of the road.
After selling vegetables for a few days, I found work for myself as the all-weather watchman for a company. That meant that while other people worked eight hours a day, I was on duty twenty-four hours a day. I didn’t have a choice. Other people got 800 per month, I got 1,300. That’s the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest. When they hired me, I took the place of two and a half people, so it made sense for them, too. After a month or so, I had enough for a cell phone. After three months, I had enough to buy a scooter. And so gradually I felt less aggrieved about the insults that I’d endured.
After working as a watchman for three months, I quit and started selling fruit. The local police station was kind enough to lend me a three-wheeled cart. Every day at three or four in the morning, I would head out to pick up some stock, because it was cheaper early in the morning. I wouldn’t get home until past ten at night. I was so busy that sometimes I didn’t have time to piss even when I really wanted to.
All in all, I sold at least two cartfuls every day. I had to sell out the fruit on the first cart by seven a.m. if I was going to make a little profit that day. Once I had made it in the struggle for existence, I needed to get a registered residence. For months I went to the district housing office at eight or nine a.m. every day. One day they simply told the security guard not to let me in.
I gritted my teeth and decided I would have to be hard to shake: I would block traffic. One day, when I was standing about three hundred feet from the district government building, I blocked a car. Looking at the license plate, I decided it was a high-ranking one. Grabbing onto the door, I asked, “Are you the district leader?”
“What do you want?” one of them asked.
“Are you the district leader?” I asked again. I was caught totally off guard when the driver put his foot on the gas and the car rocketed forward, dragging me along for about twenty feet. Both my shoes fell off. If it weren’t for my strong hands and tight grip, I would have been slammed into the gatepost ahead and killed or crippled for life. They kept driving into an underground garage, yelling at me nonstop to get off. They went in circles around the garage a few times. I momentarily lost my grip on the car door and fell on the ground, terribly scratched up. They ran away and I limped along, giving chase for several hundred feet. That got me some attention. The district housing office finally allocated me a 100-square-foot place to live.
So you finally settled down. Have you gotten married? I noticed you took two calls during the short breaks in our conversation.
Speaking of my wife, I want to tell you how I really feel. She’s really something. We’ve known each other for two years. She knows everything I do. She supports me in everything I do. When times were really hard, we’ve cried in each other’s arms. She always says, “Don’t worry. Don’t be discouraged. You have me!” Yesterday we went to her family home, and I heard her saying to her younger sister, “Big Brother Liu really had a tough time. If any of you show him disrespect, I won’t let you get away with it.”
Does your mother still live in that first room you rented?
She still lives in You’anmen, but we rented a different, slightly better place for her. This year she’s eighty-three years old. There isn’t enough room for her at my place, so what can I do? We can only take care of her rent and her living expenses, and go over to check on her as much as we can.
I’m not counting on my brothers and sisters to help. I’m not angry about it, but who was it that told the Chinese people to move into this era of reform and opening when everyone would only care about themselves and would lose their moral integrity? So now is there any choice but to look forward to an era of flourishing corruption? Why in the world do ordinary people like us hustle every day doing exhausting, backbreaking work? So that we can eat! Early every morning, we rush out the door to go to work, we come back at noon to grab something to eat, and soon it’s time to go out the door again. When evening comes, it’s wok, bowl, oil, salt, and the other necessities of life again. Most of life we live in cycles. When the end comes, they say, “Sorry, it’s your turn to be laid off.”
I’ve seen for myself how many people in their thirties and forties are being laid off from work. I see them every day at the food market looking for rotting vegetables. I’m doing all right now, but some simple repairs to my small and shabby little home cost me 10,000 or 20,000 yuan. I now owe over 10,000 yuan. We have to liv
e.
Following what Deng Xiaoping said back then, you went into business and were among those who “got rich first.” But then you got involved in June Fourth, became a rioter, and then had a long rough road after that. Do you regret it?
June Fourth was the most glorious period of my life. More than when I ran around trying to make a living, and more than when I set out to make my “fortune.” I don’t regret it at all. Although I’m now in my early fifties, every part of my body is still in good shape. I have faith that I can hold out for the day when the people of June Fourth are rehabilitated and the wrongly accused ghosts of that day will finally find peace.
The Squad Leader
We were waiting in a distant Beijing suburb when a wan-looking forty-year-old man appeared, and Wu Wenjian jumped up. The two old rioters embraced each other tightly for a long time, like two hyenas locked in combat.
Hu Zhongxi readily opened up for two or three hours and at the end showed me a manuscript he had written, called “In Commemoration of the Fifth Anniversary of June Fourth,” which contained the following words: “At that moment everyone had to make a choice: to be courageous and resolute, to flee, or to submit to tyranny and become an accomplice to evil.”
After our interview, Hu got up and said it was time for him to go. “I’m surrounded by my wife, my parents, and my children. Every time I go out, they get very worried.”
* * *
Hu Zhongxi: My life changed completely after June Fourth. During all the years that the Communist Party imprisoned me, my family spent a lot of money, made many trips, endured endless worries and sufferings all because of me. I owe so much to the love of my family. It’s a debt that can never be repaid. My life is a total failure.
What did you do before the student movement?
I was working-class. The highest directive of Old Mao was that the dictatorship of the proletariat depended on us. My work unit was an import-export supply depot. On May 12, 1989, I went to the Beijing train station to meet a committee leader to discuss some business. But when I went there, I got swept up in the mass movement and took part in the street demonstrations, a lot like the angry patriotic youth of today.
But today the only place you see the angry youth is online.
There was no Internet in those days, and no such thing as virtual reality. If you were patriotic, you went out and showed it in public and actually did things. On May 19, army tanks started to enter the city en masse, taking different routes. At Liuli Bridge in Fengtai, some tanks were blocked by the people, and at other places, too.
The troops hadn’t yet gotten the order to fire on people.
Right, many of the soldiers weren’t even armed. We were all very excited, like we were celebrating a holiday. On the evening of May 20, I completely lost my voice from yelling slogans with the demonstrators. I was even at the front, holding a banner. After that, the leader of the Capital Autonomous Federation of University Students sought me out and asked me to be on the standing committee of the Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Federation.
I didn’t say anything, I was embarrassed. But on May 22, we independently established the “Black Leopard Death-Defying Squad.” We had over fifty members, including workers, students, and people from outside Beijing. I was the squad leader. Our main responsibilities were maintaining order, providing moral support to the students, and supplying everyone, including local soldiers from the army awaiting orders, with food and drink. In addition, we maintained mobile sentry posts, made timely reports about any problems, and passed along information about the situation at various intersections.
You took care of the soldiers also?
Of course. When martial law had just begun, the Communist Party put those young peasant soldiers on the far, undeveloped fringe of the city, brainwashed them, and prohibited them from watching television or reading the newspapers. So the only authority for those soldiers was the word of their officers. When those ignorant soldiers were ordered to leave for Beijing, they had no idea at all of the true situation. So we civilians would patiently explain to them what was going on. The sacred duty of soldiers is to protect their country. What were they doing marching into Beijing? Why were so many soldiers needed in the capital city? Look around: Do these people look like counterrevolutionaries? On a hot day we give you Popsicles that we won’t even buy for ourselves. What kind of scoundrels would do such things?
How did the soldiers react?
They just hung their heads like zombies. Water dripped from their faces. I couldn’t tell if it was sweat or tears. They must have been ordered not to talk with the crowds. So when they couldn’t refuse anymore and accepted the Popsicles, they would say “Thank you” or just nod and smile.
Who would have known that in an instant the whole world would tumble into darkness? In our squad we had a kid, just seventeen years old, who had grown up in an army compound. One day this very bold young man and his team of five or six ran into a soldier on the street. The team came to a halt. To their surprise, the soldier panicked, dropped his weapon on the ground, turned, and ran.
The kid got an assault rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition for nothing. I wasn’t there at the time; I only heard about it later. I advised them to throw it away immediately. He refused to let go of the weapon, arguing that he was going to go into the mountains and fight a guerrilla war. “Just you and one lousy rifle?” I said. “That’s ridiculous.”
The kid didn’t understand. We had to force him to throw away the rifle and bury the ammunition. He was very stubborn. In front of us, he buried a few bullets on the south bank of the river. Later, when we relaxed our watch, he disappeared with the gun. Most of the kids were young and hot-blooded and didn’t think about consequences.
The day they captured me was my twenty-fourth birthday. What a birthday I had! I very nearly didn’t live out the day.
Where were you when the troops started massacring people?
In Tiananmen Square. The southeast corner. I was walking by myself and ran into someone I knew. I greeted him and kept walking. Suddenly, I heard a hissing sound and a bullet brushed by my mouth. Instinctively, I tilted my face to the right, and immediately I saw stars before my eyes and hot blood rushed from the soles of my feet up into my brain. Stupidly, I hesitated for a few seconds. Oh, fuck, they were really shooting? And they weren’t shooting those rubber bullets people talked about. I started running with all I had as the bullets pursued me. Waves of numbness came over my head, my arms, my waist. Where the bullets hit the ground all around me, sparks flashed everywhere. My pants felt warm; I must have pissed myself.
Fortunately I’m short, not a big target, so I escaped with my life. It was total chaos as many people fell around me and their blood squirted into one, two, and then many pools of blood. More than ten people lay on the ground around me. Their agonized cries and screams didn’t seem human. Those of us who hadn’t been hit kept running, with no time to look around and grasp the scene clearly. I remember yelling as I ran: “You can’t aim your rifles at the people! You can’t aim your rifles at the people!” That was the slogan of the chief of the “Black Leopard Death-Defying Squad” as he fled. Was that worth anything?
Another group, the “Northeast Tiger Death-Defying Squad,” set up a machine gun at the Monument to the People’s Heroes. Liu Xiaobo led a group of people to ask them to disarm themselves. Later, stubborn resistance didn’t make sense anymore, so we dissolved the Black Leopard Death-Defying Squad. We pooled together some money and ration cards for those team members from out of town and sent them home.
The revolution ended before it could be proclaimed.
I thought so, too, so I continued going to work. On June 12, my birthday, I found a small restaurant and had a few cups of alcohol, two cold dishes, and a plate of chicken feet. I thought of how our patriotic efforts had failed and of the many people who had died. I thought I should treat myself well and celebrate my birthday. I was still thinking about that, and my cup had just been filled, when I felt a rifle at t
he back of my head.
It was like in a movie. “Don’t move or we’ll shoot!” they yelled. Then they held me down and took me to the second floor of the local police station, where they pushed me into a darkened room. Several policemen surrounded me and started beating me without explanation. I rolled on the ground and curled up into a ball and managed to protect the most vulnerable place on my body. The most vicious was a short policeman, who kept kicking me in the crotch. I screamed in pain, “You fucking bastard, why do you have to kick me there?” Well, the little bastard grinned hideously. He then pulled me up and hit me there with his knee.
Then it was electric prods, heavy boots, clubs, and the legs of chairs—whatever they could get their hands on. Sometimes they would have me kneel down, sometimes they would have me crawl, sometimes they would have me lean against the wall and give me a big kick. They would interrogate me as they tortured me. If my answer was a little too slow, they would hit me with two high-voltage electric prods, one in my chest and one in my back. That gang of beasts tortured me from six p.m. until three a.m. I half lost consciousness and stopped noticing the pain, nearly collapsing. Finally, even my tormentors were too tired to do it any longer, so they stopped for a while. They left someone to guard me at the door. When dawn broke, a guard teased me: “You got beat up pretty bad. Don’t you want to escape?” I didn’t say a word, just cursed him silently. Escape? I thought. You’re just waiting for the chance to kill me so you can earn some points.
What questions did they ask you?
Who were the members of the Death-Defying Squad? What did you do? What division of labor did you have? What are the occupations, addresses, house numbers, and so on of the members of your gang? How would I know? We organized spontaneously. Before that, we didn’t know each other. Much later I found out that the kid with the gun had gotten scared and given the gun to someone else. That person was even more scared and turned both the gun and himself in to the police, telling them how he came to get the gun. The police tracked down the kid, which led them in turn to many members of the Death-Defying Squad.