Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

‘I don’t think it was a government plot,’ Zhuzi said, wiping the sweat from his forehead as we entered the Workers’ Federation’s tent.

As we’d suspected, Yu Dongyue, the third of the three Hunanese demonstrators, was there. He was sitting on a stool, his dirty shirt stained with flecks of black ink. Fan Yuan was asking him if he’d like a bowl of noodles. Zhuzi went over and said, ‘Don’t worry. Your two friends are with the Provincial Students’ Federation. They’re being interviewed by a television reporter.’

‘You’re in pretty deep shit!’ I said. ‘The students want to hand you over to the authorities and the secret police are onto you as well.’ It was unbearably hot inside the tent. I pulled off my T-shirt and immediately felt much better.

‘We’ll take responsibility for our actions,’ Yu Dongyue said. ‘We won’t shift the blame onto anyone else.’

‘Well, you’re free to leave now, if you want to,’ Fan Yuan said. ‘Here’s your watch and your documents.’ Fan Yuan had been helping out at the Workers’ Federation since he’d been sacked from the Beijing Students’ Federation for fleeing the Square during Zhao Ziyang’s visit.

Yu Dongyue looked up and said, ‘We won’t run away. We’ll see this thing through to the end.’

‘They didn’t break the law,’ Zhuzi said. ‘Why did you take his watch? You’re not police officers.’

‘The Dare-to-Die Squad confiscated it when they brought him over from Tiananmen Gate.’ I’d often seen Dare-to-Die members running around the Square in their red armbands. The Workers’ Federation had created this squad to deal quickly with any trouble that broke out in the Square.

‘How old are you?’ I asked Yu Dongyue. He looked very young.

‘Twenty-two,’ he said, taking a gulp of water.

‘We’re a couple of years older than you,’ Zhuzi said. ‘We’re more experienced, too. I’m a law student. I know that if you burn the national flag, which is a symbol of the nation, you’ll get three years in prison. So if you deface Mao’s portrait, you’ll probably end up with a similar sentence.’

‘There’s nothing in the constitution that says a person’s portrait can be regarded as a symbol of the nation,’ Yu Dongyue replied.

‘What subject are you studying?’ Zhuzi said.

‘I studied Fine Art at university. I work for Changde Press now, in Hunan.’

Wu Bin marched into the tent, accompanied by four student marshals. He said he wanted to hand Yu Dongyue and his two friends to the national security police. His tone was very gruff. I advised him to phone up Changde Press to check Yu Dongyue’s identity. But Wu Bin replied sternly, ‘It’s obvious they’re working for the government. We can’t let this event become another Reichstag Fire.’ He’d never behaved so imperiously before. The vastness of the Square seemed to have inflated everyone’s egos.

‘Dai Wei’s in charge of security in the Square,’ Zhuzi said, sitting down. ‘Let him deal with this.’

‘He doesn’t have any authority. The Hunger Strike Headquarters has been dissolved and the Beijing Students’ Federation has broken up as well. The Provincial Students’ Federation is the only student organisation left in the Square, so we should be controlling matters of security here.’ Wu Bin delivered his lines like an actor on the stage. He’d recently been appointed the Provincial Students’ Federation’s vice chairman.

‘You’ve no right to take the law into your hands!’ Zhuzi countered.

‘If you don’t let these men go, you’ll be no different from the thousands of plain-clothes officers already swarming through the Square,’ I said to Wu Bin. ‘If the Dare-to-Die Squad had flung ink on the portrait, would you have arrested them too?’

The leader of the Workers’ Federation walked into the tent and said, ‘The troops have surrounded Beijing. We can’t give the government any excuse to launch a crackdown. If they were to take a hardline approach now, you students would get three-year sentences, but we workers would get locked up in jail for the rest of our lives.’

Wu Bin grabbed Yu Dongyue’s arm and dragged him out of the tent.

‘I’m a law student,’ Zhuzi shouted angrily. ‘I’m telling you, this is the most idiotic and dangerous decision you could ever make, Wu Bin.’

‘There are so many different security teams now,’ I said as we watched Wu Bin drag Yu Dongyue and his two friends off to the police station. ‘Yesterday, the Lanzhou University students set up a squad called the Wolves of the North-West.’

‘Most of the students in the Square now are from the provinces, so as chairman of the Provincial Students’ Federation, Tang Guoxian has a lot of power,’ Zhuzi said.

We wandered back to the broadcast minibus. Girls stared at us as we passed, whispering to each other, ‘Look at those two tall guys. I bet they play basketball.’

When we were halfway across the Square, a strong wind whipped up, lifting plastic bags and scraps of paper into the air. The sky overhead filled with black clouds. There was thunder and lightning, then torrential rain drummed down. By the time we finally reached the minibus it was packed with people and we couldn’t squeeze in.

The fifty buses that had been parked in the Square had gone now, so there was nowhere for us to shelter. The only objects surrounding us were the flags, posters and dirty mosquito nets that were being battered by the downpour.

A voice shouted, ‘This storm is Chairman Mao taking his revenge!’

A chill ran down my spine. I turned back to look at Mao’s portrait, but saw that it was now covered by a large sheet of cloth.

‘He’s right!’ someone else shouted. ‘Those three vandals will get struck by lightning.’

‘Don’t say that! It will bring us bad luck!’

A few students ran frantically across the Square, searching for an umbrella to hide under. In the distance, I could hear girls screaming in terror.

‘Don’t forget that Mao’s corpse is lying right in the middle of this Square.’

‘They dared throw ink on the emperor’s face!’

‘Fuck you, Chairman Mao!’ Wang Fei shouted, standing stubbornly in the rain. The thick lenses of his glasses looked like two ping-pong balls.

A sense of menace pervaded the Square. It was cold and dark. Even during the biggest thunderstorms, I’d never seen the sky turn so black before.

But a few minutes later, the clouds left and the sky lit up again.

Tian Yi ran out of the minibus, pulled out her camera and began photographing the aftermath of the storm. Everyone was trembling with cold. We passed round towels and sheets of toilet paper, and tried to rub ourselves dry.

Tents, cotton sheets, quilts, wooden planks, banners and posters floated in the pools of rainwater that covered the ground. In a bemused daze, students began wandering over to the new Mao portrait the authorities had just hung up to replace the vandalised one.

It wasn’t until an hour or so later, when a huge procession of Beijing residents came marching into the Square shouting their support for us, that the mood in the Square began to lift a little.

Local residents donated ten boxes of umbrellas and padded jackets. We distributed them among the crowd in the bright afternoon sun. It soon became so hot that we had to strip down to our vests. Bai Ling returned to the Square at last. She was furious when she heard that the three guys from Hunan had been handed over to the police. She took off her baseball cap and, fanning her face with it, said, ‘That wouldn’t have happened if there hadn’t been a power vacuum in the Square. My plan now is to establish a group called the Defend Tiananmen Square Headquarters.’

I remembered the peasant I’d met in the Square in 1987 who was sentenced to ten years in jail, and suddenly felt ashamed that I hadn’t done more to stop Wu Bin taking those three guys off to the police station.