Bullets and Opium

by Liao Yiwu

  Several years after the massacre, Chen leased a small, cheap piece of unused land in a distant suburb of Chengdu and turned it into a nursery, where he cultivated flowers and trees. He also posted a sign announcing his other line of work.

  CHEN’S LABOR REFORM FARM

  Proprietor: Chen Yunfei

  Political Affiliation: I have no idea what “Party” has meant for the past twenty years.

  Occupation: Animal Tamer

  What We Tame: Officials or Police

  Later, with a cardboard sign reading “Animal Tamer” attached to his chest, he traveled all over China helping poor people living on the margins defend their rights, free of charge. He didn’t realize it, but the Chinese police and public officials he was taming were much fiercer than any actual animals anywhere in the world. Chen was beaten until he was black-and-blue on many occasions. The bruises he accumulated over the years, all over his body, did not go away. He was once beaten so badly that for months he couldn’t get out of bed.

  Later still, he added an additional line to his cardboard sign: “Please, public servants, don’t initiate violence against ‘public masters.’ ” That made people on the street gather around him and break into laughter, because, going back to old Mao Zedong himself, the Communist Party had always proclaimed that the people are the “public masters” of the state and that the Party serves the people. But according to the law, when the “servants” attack the “masters,” the “masters” can do little else but report the incident. Striking back would be a crime.

  I have great respect for Chen, not because he is fearless about getting beaten up, but because he says, “If I’m not beaten up, I can’t get to sleep” in such a hilarious way that it makes people want to cry.

  Another thing Chen likes to say is: “It was all because of that ‘mining accident on 8964’—that is, June 4, 1989.”

  “Why do you call it a ‘mining accident’?” I asked.

  “Why shouldn’t I call it a ‘mining accident’?”

  “It was obviously a great slaughter . . .”

  “A great slaughter can also be called a ‘mining accident.’ Many years from now, when all the people involved are dead, the great slaughter will be called a ‘mining accident.’ ”

  “Why are you being so ridiculous?”

  Chen winked at me, and a lightbulb suddenly turned on in my head. On a night as dark as coal, the hundreds of thousands of people who went out in the street to protest against tyranny were “miners,” and the martial law troops had been sent out to save the “miners caught in a disaster.”

  The Communist Party always fabricates history according to this kind of logic. You have to go along with it. On June 4, 2007, Chen spent 45 yuan to place a simple notice in the Chengdu Evening News: “Respect for the resolute mothers of the victims of June Fourth!” Those fourteen Chinese characters, including the exclamation point, shocked the Party, government, and military from the local level on up through the city and provincial levels all the way to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing. They made solving the case a high priority. All they caught was one highly unconventional Maitreya.

  I was astonished. “How could a Communist Party paper ever print this? What has the world come to?”

  “Nothing.”

  “How did you trick them?”

  “I didn’t trick them. I just followed the infallible logic of our Party. I called the slaughter a mining disaster. In 2007, there were dozens of mining disasters all over China. Everyone had become numb hearing about them. The lady at the ad department was very nice and asked me if I was a family member of someone who had died in a mining disaster. I said yes. She sighed and said, ‘That must have been very hard on your parents.’ ‘My father died,’ I said—he really had—and I hoped that my mother would be strong. And that was it. Except for the words ‘mining disaster,’ everything else was true.” Nodding in approval, I promised to stand him a little pot of warm baijiu down the line.

  Another year went by, and soon it was another June 4. Chen put on a Western-style suit, a tie, and a pair of very short shorts. Out of the blue, he ducked into a bloodmobile parked in the city center, stretched out his sweaty neck, and asked if he could give blood. The nurse pushed away his neck and pulled on his arm so she could put a needle in it. “Today is June 4,” he told her. “It’s the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. Do you know that?” The nurse shivered, and the needle went in the wrong way. Chen laughed. “A wronged ghost possessed you, right? You should call the police to tell them that June Fourth rioters are making trouble at blood collection points.” The nurse was so scared that she started crying. Because she was young and naïve, she really did call the police.

  Chen was detained for a few days after that. When he got out, his lips were swollen like the snout of a pig. A bunch of buddies invited him to a welcome-back feast. I joined in, too. I may be well versed in interviewing people on the margins of society, but I couldn’t think of what to ask an interview subject like Chen. With other people—the family of a June Fourth victim, for instance—I could play up my writer’s role and console them with the best words I could find. But I was at a loss when faced with this dude, who laughed and smiled cheekily like a thug whose attitude was that no matter how bad it got, no matter how deep the untreatable wound in his heart might be, he would stay cool. Everyone could only tease him and joke with him.

  Chen was denied permission to leave China. He appealed to higher levels but lost. He returned from Shenzhen, near the border with Hong Kong, to his remote suburb of Chengdu. After helping his old mother boil a pot of congee, he took out his passport and travel permit for Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan and put them in a homemade paper coffin. He then wrapped a white turban around his head to show his filial piety, shed some crocodile tears, and held solemn funeral rites for his official documents. When he posted pictures of the mock funeral on the Internet, the Internet police roared with anger, but for the moment they couldn’t find any pretext to retaliate against him. They swore, however, that sooner or later they would dig a hole in which to bury the goddamn “animal tamer.”

  In the end, before the wild animals even had a chance to dig their hole, the animal tamer fell into a trap. He even brought another twenty-odd people along with him. In a traditional gesture of respect for the dead, they had gone to Xinjin County, on the outskirts of Chengdu, to sweep the tomb of Wu Guofeng, a model student and brave photographer who was killed on June Fourth.

  Chen had read my account of Wu’s death in The Corpse Walker: Real-Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up and had long wanted to get to present a bouquet of flowers at Wu Guofeng’s grave. He wanted to meet Wu’s parents, one of whom suffered from migraines, while the other had lost a kidney, and see if they would take on the animal tamer as a kind of adopted son. But when the animal tamer got to Xinjin, he was surrounded and captured by over a hundred “police beasts.” His crime, long ago determined by the relevant organs, was incitement to overthrow the government and troublemaking.

  After being locked up for two years, Chen’s animal taming case was taken up in court. The prosecutor read the indictment. When Chen’s lawyer argued that he wasn’t guilty, the judge constantly yelled and interrupted him. People from his home village, who had gathered outside the courtroom to support him, were put one by one into a mobile animal cage. When the time came for the animal tamer to make his final statement, the judge glanced at his watch and told him that he had one minute.

  Chen took a deep breath and started reading his statement. “Dear lawyer and swindlers of the prosecution: I have been tortured for over two years now. I feel like the legendary Monkey King who was thrown in the furnace for concocting the pills of immortality. It felt so good in there. The prosecution, the beatings, the wearing of leg irons that I have gone through are like math problems: the more difficult they are, the more interesting they get, and the more significant they become. I want to thank the swindlers of the prosecution again for making me
the man I am today. Thank you for making me into a household name for spreading propaganda throughout the whole world on behalf of the cause of freedom of speech and opposing dictatorship and tyranny. It satisfies my vanity, though in reality I am not so good or brave as a person—”

  “Shut up!” roared the prosecutor.

  “I always warn officials wandering near my prison door, for their own good: Ahead is a great abyss; retreat from it, repent, and be saved, or they will destroy you in the end—and they always do. People on the Internet ridicule me, saying that I am the black crow prophesying doom. Whoever I mention ends up going to jail . . .”

  “Shut up!” yelled the judge, the prosecutor, and the court stenographer all together.

  “Swindlers, stop before it’s too late . . .”

  “Seal his mouth! Son of a bitch!” they shouted, and the court became a combat zone as the roars of lions vied with the growls of tigers. The police rushed forward, but the animal tamer dodged them. The police swung their clubs and hit the face of the accused. Blood splattered in all directions, but he kept on reading his statement: “Lord, please forgive me . . . and forgive the swindlers of the prosecution because they know not what they do. I say this prayer in the name of Jesus, the son of our Heavenly Father . . .”

  They pushed the animal tamer to the ground. Once again his lips swelled up like a pig’s snout. The judge wiped the sweat from his face and sentenced Chen to four years in prison. Chen said he refused to accept the sentence, swearing to appeal because it was too light.

  The Accomplice

  One day, at home in Sichuan, I got a call from someone claiming to be my “accomplice.” When I went downstairs to meet him, I saw a plump, ruddy-cheeked man entering the main gate of our apartment complex, opening his arms toward me from a distance. It was the former poet Li Qi, who once played a small role in the production company for my film musical Requiem, which landed us all in jail. Now he was in the “alternative book business,” a gray market where people purchase excess print runs directly from the printer and sell them off on the side. There was no trace of the suave young man he once was.

  Li talked about how other accomplices of ours—friends also sentenced in connection with Requiem—were doing. “Most of them have made some money, but there are exceptions like L, who still lives in the county capital. The woman he married snorts heroin. Whenever she’s on the stuff, she starts cutting her wrists. The whole family hit rock bottom. Not to mention W, who lost two wives in ten years and now spends his days drinking, stuck in a dream world.”

  * * *

  Li Qi: I don’t think we’ve seen each other in ten years.

  That’s right. In 1994, a month or two after getting out of prison, I went to Chongqing to visit you. We were like two thieves standing at the end of the alley near your home. You suddenly gave me 200 yuan and found an excuse to hurry off. At the time I was hurt. I had spent more than ten hours on the train from Chengdu and you wouldn’t even invite me into your home for a rest or a drink of water. But compared to other accomplices of ours, you and I at least met up. Z wouldn’t even take my phone calls.

  So many years have passed. Nobody owes anybody anything. You should be content with your lot. So many of your buddies were scapegoated and thrown in jail for your film musical, while you alone became famous as the ringleader.

  So what if you had to spend four years in prison; in the end, it will ultimately be worth it. One day sooner or later, the June Fourth cases will be overturned. Then you will be the hero and get all the credit, demanding justice and decency and even material compensation from the state for your sufferings. What a beautiful prospect! Meanwhile, the rest of us caught up in the case were jailed for a year or two, some just for a few months. We went through the same torture, but we were just “educated and released.” No credit for that.

  That wasn’t my choice. Nobody is willing to go to jail for four years for the sake of a poem or two.

  What was I punished for?

  I don’t know myself. When we made the film Requiem, I borrowed some costumes from you. You donated several hundred yuan and went with me to the Sichuan Institute of Foreign Languages dance hall to find some actresses.

  I wasn’t even an official member of the film crew. At most I played a tiny role in the whole thing, but for that my home was searched, I was thrown into an interrogation center, and I was locked up for over half a year. I was interrogated in shifts for over ten days, grinning and bearing it as they slapped me around. I confessed everything and wrote up a pile of evidence exposing your activities. All I wanted was to get out of there as soon as I could. The interrogation center was hellish. Although I was a political prisoner and didn’t have to go through the prison entry procedures, I had to sleep next to the toilet and ended up with lice all over my body. At the time, my daughter had just turned one and my wife, Xiaoxiao, needed someone to care for her. My life was ruined.

  I would guess that all over China something on the order of several hundred thousand people were investigated, at least briefly, after June Fourth—more than the number detained in the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957.

  Generally speaking, experiencing a few trials and tribulations in your life is not necessarily a bad thing, but I paid too terrible a price for it.

  When I got home from jail, Xiaoxiao was sitting in a chair with the baby, not saying a word. I went over to her, thinking I would bend over and give her a kiss. Instead she got up and pointed to the change of clothes next to us. “First take a bath.”

  I walked into the bathroom like a zombie. The emotional reunion after a long separation, which I had rehearsed so many times in prison, just popped like a bubble. Washing and scrubbing in the hot bath relieved my frustration—it was something I hadn’t been able to do for many months—and I relaxed. I understood that Xiaoxiao must be angry with me. Taking care of the child for so long without her husband had been hard on her.

  I couldn’t taste dinner. I kept stealing glances at her on the other side of the dining table. I wanted to hold her, I wanted intimacy, so much! What a long-suffering prisoner wants most is to spend the whole night hugging his wife, having sex, and pouring out his heart to her. But Xiaoxiao was quiet, without the slightest ripple of feeling. Whenever I tried to approach her, she would put the child in front of her chest like a holy woman’s shield of chastity.

  Later, I learned that Xiaoxiao purposely went and brought our daughter back—she was staying with Xiaoxiao’s parents—so she could use the kid against me. Late that night when everything was quiet and she no longer had any excuses to keep puttering around, Xiaoxiao finally came to bed. The child was already sound asleep. I whispered to her, “Put Bingbing back in her little bed.” She refused and put the child on the bed between us.

  I nearly got down on my knees and begged, but she still said no. She turned out the lights and lay down with the child under her armpit, like a trench between us separating flesh from soul. I repeatedly reached out to stroke her hair, to feel her neck, to touch her breasts. But she kept shrinking away from me, saying, “Don’t disturb Bingbing.” Finally I couldn’t contain myself any longer. I got up, crossed the trench, and pressed her under me. We wrestled quietly, rolling off the bed. The child woke up crying and called for her mother. From beneath my body, she called repeatedly, “Don’t cry, Bingbing. Be good, don’t cry.”

  Seized by lust, I pulled off her clothes and forced my way into her. She couldn’t move. She just grabbed at me, called me an asshole, and sobbed. The child was fussing and her mother was crying. I had never expected our reunion to be such hell. I felt like I’d sinned. After coming quickly, I slapped myself hard on my face twice and roared, “What have I done wrong? What have I done wrong?”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” said Xiaoxiao. “It’s me and Bingbing. We’re a burden to you; we’re keeping you from achieving great things.”

  “I didn’t want to go to jail, either,” I explained. “I didn’t want to leave you.”

  “I�
�ve had enough of you poets,” said Xiaoxiao. “I’m vulgar. I’m sleazy. I’m greedy for money. I want a quiet life. If you can’t live with that, you should leave now.”

  I said I would never leave them. I swore all I wanted in life was my wife, my child, and a warm bed. I repeatedly cursed your ancestors, Liao Yiwu, going back eight generations. When dawn came, I saw that she had calmed down and I took the opportunity to ask if we could have sex. Xiaoxiao didn’t resist this time, but she was like a block of wood letting me move her back and forth. When I was finished, she got up right away to wash herself off. I was an idiot, following her around with a smile on my face, until she turned around, irritated, and said, “You don’t have any feelings at all. You’re pathetic, Li Qi.”

  She was deliberately hurting you.

  It’s all because of you. Xiaoxiao got dragged into it, too. She was jailed for over ten days and interrogated almost every day. Just think about that: a naïve and simple girl, a college graduate whose character had been formed by literature and who, after she married me, wrote a love diary nearly every day. Suddenly all that was swept away. Locked up with her in the women’s prison were prostitutes, thieves, pimps, perverts, and drug addicts. They were even more brutal in their torturing of new prisoners than the men. They would burn her vagina, use chopsticks to squeeze her nipples, and hit her buttocks with plywood. Scared to death, Xiaoxiao wept all day and nearly went crazy.

  This disaster completely changed her outlook on life. She hated me, and hated you, the root of our disaster, even more. She decided she would reform me when I got out. She gathered up all the strange clothes I wore in my poet days and threw them out. Then she took me to a department store to buy a Western business suit, a tie, and leather shoes. I felt uncomfortable dressed up like that from head to toe. To be blunt, I had never dressed up since leaving my mother’s womb. Even worse, she put a waxy wig on my bald head that made me sweat like a pig. But I didn’t dare take it off, so I just frowned. Xiaoxiao took great pains with my appearance, putting me in front of the dresser mirror and examining me closely for a long time. Finally she laughed with satisfaction. “This is what a normal man looks like.”