Ma Jian - Beijing Coma

‘Do any of you know what’s happened to Yang Tao?’

‘Our great military strategist? He’s a taxi driver now. I’ve read some articles he’s posted on the internet…’

‘Fan Yuan is a lost cause. There’s no point asking him to join us. He runs a tour company now. Can you believe it?’

‘I’m sure we’ll manage to get at least a thousand people together,’ Liu Gang says. ‘We’ll just walk through the streets. No banners.’

‘Yu Jin works for the Global Education Network now. We can ask him to help pass on information about the march. Zhuzi is head of security at an expensive nightclub. He’s in contact with several old classmates who now have high-ranking jobs in the Party.’

‘Did you hear that Zhang Jie is a delegate of a municipal People’s Congress?’ Wang Fei says disdainfully. ‘That oily wretch. Back in the Square, he was one of my bloody foot soldiers!’

‘If you can call it a municipality! It’s more like a small country town. He took over a failing state-owned cotton factory, cut the staff, turned it into a joint stock company and made a profit in the first year. He’s been named a “model manager”.’

The sparrow has flown off into the covered balcony to escape the noise in the room. My mother has put a cardboard box in there for it to sleep in and a bowl of millet.

‘And Hai Feng — has anyone heard from him?’ Mao Da asks.

‘He was in prison for five years and had a nervous breakdown when he came out. He’s doing manual work in his uncle’s printing factory now. Who else is there in Beijing we can get in touch with?’ Liu Gang’s voice is very calm. He’s sitting on a stool, smoking a cigarette.

‘Cheng Bing’s got married. I suppose Sister Gao’s still around… Why don’t you open the window and let the bird out, Auntie? The poor creature…’

The sparrow isn’t used to me having so many visitors. It’s flown onto the Bodhisattva Guanyin figurine on the wooden shelf and is chirping loudly.

‘I keep the window open all day but it doesn’t want to leave. Look, it shits all over the flat, but it has never once shat on Dai Wei.’

‘Many students dropped out of university after the crackdown, so it’s difficult to find them,’ Mao Da says. ‘Chen Di’s still in Beijing. He’s sold the bookshop and set up an interior design company. Then there’s Mimi, of course. After she divorced Yu Jin, she opened an etiquette school for girls in the Qianmen district. I can’t think of anyone else…’

‘What’s Dong Rong up to? When I phoned his number, a secretary answered and said, “Chairman Dong isn’t in his office at this moment.”’

‘He’s loaded. He’s bought his mistress a luxury apartment near the International Trade Centre. She’s that girl from Hunan who used to hang around with all the painters and movie stars.’

‘He keeps a low profile. I think he’s set up a fibre-optic cable company that has connections with the Ministry of Foreign Trade. He’s always travelling abroad.’

‘We must take advantage of Shu Tong’s return to China,’ Wang Fei says. ‘The international community will be watching to see how President Jiang Zemin deals with the tenth anniversary of 4 June. We must do something symbolic to mark the occasion. If we march through the streets, the worst that will happen is that we’ll be sent to prison for a few years.’

‘Political activists aren’t sent to jail now, they’re detained in Ankang mental hospitals. You’ll end up in one if you’re not careful, Wang Fei. They’ll get a psychiatrist to diagnose you as a political maniac then imprison you for five years. All the staff are employees of the public security bureau, even the doctors and nurses.’

‘We should adopt a moderate strategy, and focus on pushing for gradual democratisation,’ Liu Gang says.

‘I’m not suggesting we launch another mass movement,’ says Wang Fei. ‘But as survivors of the massacre we have a duty to hold the government to account. We must demand they reverse their verdict on the student movement and issue a public apology to all the victims of the crackdown and their families.’ Wang Fei spits out a cloud of smoke. There’s a smell of cat piss wafting from his wheelchair.

‘Don’t start plotting any more campaigns,’ my mother moans. ‘Enough people have been killed and injured already. Fighting the government will get you nowhere. It’s as pointless as throwing eggs at rocks.’

‘It was the demonstration you Falun Gong practitioners staged outside Zhongnanhai that inspired us to get together again, Auntie.’

‘That wasn’t a demonstration, it was an appeal. None of us sat down, in case the government accused us of staging a sit-in. We didn’t even speak. We just stood quietly on the street meditating.’

‘If the government is making another bid to host the Olympics, it might allow our march to go ahead, to trick the foreign community into believing that it’s turned over a new leaf…’

‘We’re the “Tiananmen Generation”, but no one dares call us that,’ Wang Fei says. ‘It’s taboo. We’ve been crushed and silenced. If we don’t take a stand now, we will be erased from the history books. The economy is developing at a frantic pace. In a few more years the country will be so strong, the government will have nothing to fear, and no need or desire to listen to us. So if we want to change our lives, we must take action now. This is our last chance. The Party is begging the world to give China the Olympics. We must beg the Party to give us basic human rights.’ Wang Fei’s wheelchair rattles and squeaks as he twists from side to side.

Time overlaps before your eyes. The past spreads through your flesh like a maze of blood vessels.

Liu Gang rode up on his bike, having just returned from the Fuxingmen intersection. There were bloodstains on his shirt. ‘Cao Ming’s afraid that our phone lines are being tapped, so he’s gone back to the campus to tell the organising committee that the army has been given orders to clear the Square.’

Bai Ling screeched hoarsely into her megaphone, ‘Fellow students, this is Bai Ling speaking… The martial law troops have begun forcing their way through the barricades, and they’re heading for the Square. There has been bloodshed at most of the major intersections. Fellow students, citizens, we will remain in the Square until the bitter end! Please find yourselves some weapons. You will need to defend yourselves…’

‘That must be another of Wang Fei’s stupid ideas! What weapons do they expect the students to find here that will be the slightest use against tanks?’ Hai Feng stamped on some boxes of leftover food. Lin Lu’s walkie-talkie was clucking in the background.

‘Xiao Li’s been injured, Dai Wei,’ Yu Jin said, taking off his cap to wipe the sweat from his brow. ‘He’s in the broadcast station.’

I walked in and saw that the scarf wrapped around Xiao Li’s head was soaked in blood. He said that martial law troops had used tear gas to try to disperse the crowd at the barricades, but when that hadn’t worked, they’d attacked the crowd with their rifle butts. I told him to lie down on the floor and stay still.

A retired soldier was explaining to the students how to disable army tanks and prepare Molotov cocktails. He’d utter a few sentences into the microphone, then turn to the side and gesticulate with his hands to clarify what he was saying. But each time he turned away, his voice became inaudible. An announcement came over the government speakers fixed to the lamp posts, saying that a counter-revolutionary riot had erupted in Beijing, and that everyone should leave the Square immediately.

Big Chan and Little Chan rushed over with an injured foreign reporter, but there was no room left inside the tent. Big Chan said that if he and Little Chan hadn’t pulled the reporter out of the way in time, he would have got crushed under the wheels of a tank. Little Chan had cut his fingers. His nails were covered in blood. Streams of people kept turning up to show us the cartridge cases, steel helmets and compasses they’d pilfered from abandoned army tanks.